*.!:'r 


ll'ii 


LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON.  N.  J. 


PRESENTED  BY 


Princeton  University  Library 


XT 
bR  123  .G3  1897 
Gannett,  William  Channing, 

1840-1923. 
The  faith  that  makes 

faithful 


THE  FAITH  THAT  MAKES  FAITHFUL 


THE 


FAITH  THAT  MAKES  FAITHFUL 


BY 


WILLIAM  CHANNING  GANNETT 

AND 

JENKIN  LLOYD  JONES 


Sj  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  muat. 

The  youth  replies,  lean. 


T WENTY-SIX TH  TH O  USA  ND 


CHICAGO 

UNITY  PUBLISHING  COiMPANY 

1897 


Copyright,  1896, 
By  Charles  H.  Kerr  &  Company. 


(dedication  in  iS86) 
TO  OUR  YOKE-FELLOW 

3obn  Calvin  Xearne^ 


AND   GOOD   GREETING    TO    HIM    NOW,    IN    THE   NEW    LIGHT 

August,  1894 


CONTENTS. 

Page 

Blessed  Be  Drudgery. — W.  C.  G.  -        -        -        •  ii 

'    Faithfulness.— J.  Ll.  J.     -        -        -        -        -  37 

V   "I  Had  A  Friend."— W.  C.  G.         -        ...  64 

Tenderness. — J.     Ll,     J. 89 

A  Cup  OF  Cold  Water.— W.C.  G             •        -  yi7 

The  Seamless  Robe. — J.  Ll,  J.            -        -        -  145 

Wrestling  and  Blessing. — W.  C.  G.       -        -        -  170 

The  Divine  Benediction. — J.  Ll.  J              •        •  200 


BLESSED  BE  DRUDGERY 


Of  every  two  men  probably  one  man  thinks 
he  is  a  drudge,  and  every  second  woman  is 
sure  she  is.  Either  we  are  not  doing  the  thing 
we  would  like  to  do  in  life;  or,  in  what  we  do 
and  like,  we  find  so  much  to  dislike,  that  the 
rut  tires,  even  when  the  road  runs  on  the 
whole  a  pleasant  way.  I  am  going  to  speak 
of  the  Culture  that  comes  through  this  very 
drudgery. 

"Culture  through  my  drudgery!"  some  one  is 
now  thinking:  "This  tread-mill  that  has  worn 
me  out,  this  grind  I  hate,  this  plod  that,  as 
long  ago  as  I  remember  it,  seemed  tiresome, — 
to  this  have  I  owed  'culture'?  Keeping  house 
or  keeping  accounts,  tending  babies,  teaching 
primary  school,  weighing  sugar  and  salt  at  a 
counter,  those  blue    overalls    in    the   machine 


12  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

shop, — have  these  anything  to  do  with  'cul- 
ture'? Culture  takes  leisure,  elegance,  wide 
margins  of  time,  a  pocket-book:  drudgery 
means  limitations,  coarseness,  crowded  hours, 
chronic  worry,  old  clothes,  black  hands,  head- 
aches. Culture  implies  college:  life  allows  a 
daily  paper,  a  monthly  magazine,  the  circulat- 
ing library,  and  two  gift-books  at  Christmas. 
Our  real  and  our  ideal  are  not  twins, — never 
were!  I  want  the  books, — but  the  clothes- 
basket  wants  me.  The  two  children  are  good, — 
and  so  would  be  two  hours  a  day  without 
the  children.  I  crave  an  out-door  life, — and 
walk  down  town  of  mornings  to  perch  on  a 
high  stool  till  supper-time.  I  love  Nature, 
and  figures  are  my  fate.  My  taste  is  books, 
and  I  farm  it.  My  taste  is  art,  and  I  correct 
exercises.  My  taste  is  science,  and  I  measure 
tape.  I  am  young  and  like  stir:  the  business 
jogs  on  like  a  stage-coach.  Or  I  am  not  young, 
I  am  getting  gray  over  my  ears,  and  like  to 
sit  down  and  be  still:  but  the  drive  of  the 
business  keeps  both  tired  arms  stretched  out 
full  length.  I  hate  this  overbidding  and  this 
underselling,  this  spry,  unceasing  competition, 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY  I3 

and  would  willingly  give  up  a  quarter  of  my 
profits  to  have  two  hours  of  my  daylight  to 
myself, — at  least  I  would  if,  working  just  as  I 
do,  I  did  not  barely  get  the  children  bread 
and  clothes.  I  did  not  choose  my  calling, 
but  was  dropped  into  it — byjny  innocent  con- 
ceit, or  by  duty  to  the  family,  or  by  a  par- 
ent's foolish  pride,  or  by  our  hasty  marriage; 
or  a  mere  accident  wedged  me  into  it.  Would 
I  could  have  my  life  over  again!  Then,  what- 
ever I  should  be,  at  least  I  would  not  be  what 
I  am  to-day !" 

Have  I  spoken  truly  for  any  one  here?  I 
know  I  have.  Goes  not  the  grumble  thus  with- 
in the  silent  breast  of  many  a  person,  whose 
pluck  never  lets  it  escape  to  words  like  these, 
save  now  and  then  on  a  tired  evening  to  hus- 
band or  to  wife? 

There  is  often  truth  and  justice  in  the  grum- 
ble. Truth  and  justice  both.  Still,  when  the 
question  rises  through  the  grumble,  Can  it  be 
that  drudgery,  not  to  be  escaped,  gives  "cul- 
ture"? the  true  answer  is, — Yes,  and  culture 
of  the  prime  elements  of  life;  of  the  very  fun- 
damentals of  all  fine  manhood  and  fine  woman- 
hood. 


14  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

Our  prime  elements  are  due  to  our  drudgery, 
—  I  mean  that  literally;  the  fundamentals^  that 
underlie  all  fineness,  and  without  which  no 
other  culture  worth  the  winning  is  even  pos- 
sible. These,  for  instance, — and  what  names 
are  more  familiar?  Power  of  attention;  power 
of  industry;  promptitude  in  beginning  work; 
method  and  accuracy  and  despatch  in  doing 
work;  perseverance;  courage  before  difficul- 
ties; cheer  under  straining  burdens;  self-con- 
trol and  self-denial  and  temperance.  These 
are  the  prime  qualities;  these  the  fundamen- 
tals. We  have  heard  these  names  before! 
When  we  were  small.  Mother  had  a  way  of 
harping  on  them,  and  Father  joined  in  emphat- 
ically, and  the  minister  used  to  refer  to  them 
in  church.  And  this  was  what  our  first  em- 
ployer meant, — only  his  way  of  putting  the 
matter  was,  "Look  sharp,  my  boy!" — "Be  on 
time,  John!" — "Stick  to  it!"  Yes,  that  is  just 
what  they  all  meant:  these  are  the  very  qual- 
ities which  the  mothers  tried  to  tuck  into  us 
when  they  tucked  us  into  bed,  the  very  qual- 
ities which  the  ministers  pack  into  their  plati- 
tudes, and  which  the  nations  pack    into    their 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 


15 


proverbs.  And  that  goes  to  show  that  the}^ 
are  the  fundamentals.  Reading,  writing  and 
arithmetic  are  very  handy,  but  these  funda- 
mentals of  a  man  are  handier  to  have;  worth 
more;  worth  more  than  Latin  and  Greek  and 
French  and  German  and  music  and  art-history 
and  painting  and  wax  flowers  and  travels  in 
Europe,  added  together.  These  last  are  the 
decorations  of  a  man  or  woman  :  even  reading 
and  writing  are  but  conveniences:  those  other 
things  are  the  indispensables.  They  make  one's 
sit-fast  strength,  and  one's  active  momentum, 
whatsoever  and  wheresoever  the  lot  in  life  be, — 
be  it  wealth  or  poverty,  city  or  country,  li- 
brary or  workshop.  Those  qualities  make  the 
solid  substance  of   one's  self. 

And  the  question  I  would  ask  of  myself  and 
you  is,  How  do  we  get  them?  How  do  they 
become  ours?  High  school  and  college  can 
give  much,  but  these  are  never  on  their  pro- 
grammes. All  the  book-processes  that  we  go 
to  the  schools  for,  and  commonly  call  "our 
education,"  give  no  more  than  opportunity  to 
win  these  indispensables  of  education.  How, 
then,  do  we  get  them?     We    get    them  some 


lO  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

what  as  the  fields  and  valleys  get  their  grace. 
Whence  is  it  that  the  lines  of  river  and  meadow 
and  hill  and  lake  and  shore  conspire  to-day 
to  make  the  landscape  beautiful?  Only  by 
long  chisellings  and  steady  pressures.  Only 
by  ages  of  glacier-crush  and  grind,  by  scour  of 
floods,  by  centuries  of  storm  and  sun.  These 
rounded  the  hills,  and  scooped  the  valley- 
curves,  and  mellowed  the  soil  for  meadow- 
grace.  There  was  little  grace  in  the  operation, 
had  we  been  there  to  watch.  It  was  "drudg- 
ery" all  over  the  land.  Mother  Nature  was 
down  on  her  knees  doing  her  early  scrubbing- 
work  !  That  was  yesterday:  to-day,  result  of 
scrubbing-work,  we  have  the  laughing  land- 
scape. 

Now  what  is  true  of  the  earth  is  true  of  each 
man  and  woman  on  the  earth.  Father  and 
mother  and  the  ancestors  before  them  have 
done  much  to  bequeath  those  elemental  quali- 
ties to  us;  but  that  which  scrubs  them  into  us, 
the  clinch  which  makes  them  actually  ours, 
and  keeps  them  ours,  and  adds  to  them  as  the 
years  go  by, — that  depends  on  our  ov/n  plod, 
our  plod  in  the  rut,  our  drill   of  habit;  in  one 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY  I7 

word,  depends  upon  our  "drudgery."  It  is 
because  we  have  to  go,  and  go,  morning  after 
morning,  through  rain,  through  shine,  through 
tooth-ache,  head-ache,  heart-ache  to  the  ap- 
pointed spot,  and  do  the  appointed  work;  be- 
cause,and  only  because, we  have  to  stick  to  that 
work  through  the  eight  or  ten  hours,  long  after 
rest  would  be  so  sweet;  because  the  school- 
boy's lesson  must  be  learnt  at  nine  o'clock  and 
learnt  without  a  slip;  because  the  accounts  on 
the  ledger  must  square  to  a  cent;  because  the 
goods  must  tally  exactly  with  the  invoice;  be- 
cause good  temper  must  be  kept  with  chil- 
dren, customers,  neighbors,  not  seven,  but 
seventy  times  seven  times;  because  the  beset- 
ting sin  must  be  watched  to-day,  to-morrow, 
and  the  next  day;  in  short,  without  much  mat- 
ter what  our  work  be,  whether  this  or  that,  it 
is  because,  and  only  because,  of  the  rut,  plod, 
grind,  hum-drum  m  the  work,  that  we  at  last 
get  those  self-foundations  laid  of  which  I 
spoke, — attention,  promptness,  accuracy,  firm- 
ness, patience,  self-denial,  and  the  rest.  When 
I  think  over  that  list  and  seriously  ask  myself 
three  questions,  I    have  to    answer    each  with 


l8  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

No:  — Are  there  an}'  qualities  in  the  list  which 
I  can  afford  to  spare,  to  go  without,  as  mere 
show-qualities?  Not  one.  Can  I  get  these 
self-foundations  laid,  save  by  the  weight,  year 
in,  year  out,  of  the  steady  pressures?  No, 
there  is  no  other  way.  Is  there  a  single  one 
in  the  list  which  I  can  not  get  in  some  degree 
by  undergoing  the  steady  drills  and  pressures? 
No,  not  one.  Then  beyond  all  books,  beyond 
all  class-work  at  the  school,  beyond  all  special 
opportunities  of  what  1  call  my  "education," 
it  is  this  drill  and  pressure  of  my  daily  task 
that  is  my  great  school-master.  Afy  daily 
task,  whatever  it  be, — that  is  what  mai}ily  edu- 
cates me.  All  other  culture  is  mere  luxury 
compared  with  what  that  gives.  That  gives 
the  indispensables.  Yet  fool  that  I  am,  this 
pressure  of  my  daily  task  is  the  very  thing 
that  I  so  growl  at  as  my  "drudgery"  ! 

We  can  add  right  here  this  fact,  and  prac- 
tically it  is  a  very  important  fact  to  girls  and 
boys  as  ambitious  as  they  ought  to  be, — the 
higher  our  ideals,  the  viore  we  need  those 
foundation  habits  strong.  The  street-cleaner 
can  better  afford  to    drink    and  laze    than    he 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY  IQ 

who  would  make  good  shoes  ;  and  to  make  good 
shoes  takes  less  force  of  character  and  brain 
than  to  make  cures  in  the  sick-room,  or  laws 
in  the  legislature,  or  children  in  the  nursery. 
The  man  who  makes  the  head  of  a  pin  or  the 
split  of  a  pen  all  day  long,  and  the  man  who 
must  put  fresh  thought  into  his  work  at  every 
stroke, — which  of  the  two  more  needs  the  self- 
control,  the  method,  the  accuracy,  the  power 
of  attention  and  concentration?  Do  you  sigh 
for  books  and  leisure  and  wealth?  It  takes  more 
"concentration"  to  use  books — head-tools — 
well  than  to  use  hand-tools.  It  takes  more 
"self  control"  to  use  leisure  well  than  work- 
days. Compare  the  Sundays  and  Mondays  of 
your  city;  which  day,  all  things  considered, 
stands  for  the  city's  higher  life, — the  day  on 
which  so  many  men  are  lolling,  or  the  day  on 
which  all  toil?  It  takes  more  knowledge,  more 
integrity,  more  justice,  to  handle  riches  well 
than  to  bear  the  healthy  pinch  of  the  just- 
enough. 

Do  you  think  that  the  great  and  famous  es- 
cape drudgery?  The  native  power  and  tem- 
perament, the  outfit  and  capital  at  birth,  counts 


20  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

for  much,  but  it  convicts  us  common  minds 
of  huge  mistake  to  hear  the  uniform  testimony 
of  the  more  successful  geniuses  about  their 
genius.  "Genius  is  patience,"  said  who?  Sir 
Isaac  Newton.  "The  Prime  Minister's  secret 
is  patience,"  said  who?  Mr.  Pitt,  the  great 
Prime  Minister  of  England.  Who,  think  you, 
wrote,  "My  imagination  would  never  have 
served  me  as  it  has,  but  for  the  habit  of  com- 
monplace, humble,  patient,  daily,  toiling, 
drudging  attention"?  It  was  Charles  Dickens. 
Who  said,  "The  secret  of  a  Wall-street  mil- 
lion is  common  honesty"?  Vanderbilt;  and 
he  added  as  the  recipe  for  a  million  (I  know 
somebody  would  like  to  learn  it),  "Never  use 
what  is  not  your  own,  never  buy  what  you  can- 
not pay  for,  never  sell  what  you  haven't  got." 
How  simple  great  men's  rules  are!  How  easy 
it  is  to  be  a  great  man!  Order,  diligence,  pa- 
tience, honesty, — just  what  you  and  I  must 
use  in  order  to  put  our  dollar  in  the  savings- 
bank,  to  do  our  school-boy  sum,  to  keep  the 
farm  thrifty,  and  the  house  clean,  and  the 
babies  neat.  Order,  diligence,  patience,  hon- 
esty!    There  is  wide  difference  between  men, 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY  21 

but  truly  it  lies  less  in  some  special  gift  or 
opportunity  granted  to  one  and  withheld  from 
another,  than  in  the  differing  degree  in  which 
these  common  elements  of  human  power  are 
owned  and  used.  Not  how  much  talent  have 
I,  but  how  much  v/ili  to  use  the  talent  that  I 
have,  is  the  main  question.  Not  how  much 
do  I  know,  but  how  much  do  I  do  with  what 
I  know?  To  do  their  great  work  the  great 
ones  need  more  of  the  very  same  habits  which 
the  little  ones  need  to  do  their  smaller  work. 
Goethe,  Spencer,  Agassiz,  Jesus,  share,  not 
achievements,  but  conditions  of  achievement, 
with  you  and  me.  And  those  conditions  for 
them,  as  for  us,  are  largely  the  plod,  the  drill, 
the  long  disciplines  of  toil.  If  v/e  ask  such 
men  their  secret,  they  will  uniformly  tell  us  so. 
Since  we  lay  the  firm  substrata  of  ourselves 
in  this  way,  then,  and  only  in  this  way;  and 
since  the  higher  we  aim,  the  more,  and  not  the 
less,  we  need  these  firm  substrata, — since  this 
is  so,  I  think  we  ought  to  make  up  our  minds 
and  our  mouths  to  sing  a  hallelujah  unto  Drudg- 
ery: Blessed  be  Drudgery,— \.\i^  one  thing  that 
we  can  not  spare! 


22  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 


II 


But  there  is  something  else  to  be  said. 
Among  the  people  who  are  drudges,  there  are 
some  who  have  given  up  their  dreams  of  what, 
when  younger,  they  used  to  talk  or  think  about 
as  their  "ideals;  "  and  have  grown  at  last, if  not 
content,  resigned  to  do  the  actual  work  before 
them.  Yes,  here  it  is, — before  us,  and  behind 
us,  and  on  all  sides  of  us;  we  cannot  change 
it;  we  have  accepted  it.  Still,  we  have  not 
given  up  one  dream, — the  dream  of  success 
in  this  work  to  which  we  are  so  clamped. 
If  we  can  not  win  the  well-beloved  one,  then 
success  with  the  ill-beloved, — this  at  least  is 
left  to  hope  for.  Success  may  make  it  well-be- 
loved, too, — who  knows?  Well,  the  secret 
of  this  Success  still  lies  in  the  same  old 
word,  "drudgery."  For  drudgery  is  the  doing 
of  one  thing,  one  thing,  one  thing,  long 
after  it  ceases  to  be  amusing;  and  it  is  this 
"one  thing    I    do"  that    gathers    me    together 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY  23 

from  my  chaos,  that  concentrates  me  from 
possibilities  to  powers,  and  turns  pov/ers 
into  achievements.  "One  thing  I  do,"  said 
Paul,  and,  apart  from  what  his  one  thing  was, 
in  that  phrase  he  gave  the  watchword  of  sal- 
vation. That  whole  long  string  of  habits, — at- 
tention, method,  patience,  self-control,  and 
the  others, — can  be  rolled  up  and  balled,  as 
it  were,  in  the  word  "concentration."  We 
will  halt  a  moment  at   the  word  : — 

*'I  give  you  the  end  of  a  golden  string: 

Only  wind  it  into  a  ball, — 
It  will  lead  you  in  at  Heaven's  gate, 
Built  in  Jerusalem's  wall." 

Men  may  be  divided  into  two  classes, — those 
who  have  a  "one  thing,"  and  those  who  have 
no  "one  thing,"  to  do;  those  with  aim,  and 
those  without  aim,  in  their  lives:  and  practi- 
cally it  turns  out  that  almost  all  of  the  suc- 
cess, and  therefore  the  greater  part  of  the 
happiness,  go  to  the  first  class.  The  aim  in 
life  is  what  the  back-bone  is  in  the  body  :  with- 
out it  we  are  invertebrate,  belong  to  some  lower 
order  of  being  not  yet  man.  No  wonder  that 
the  great  question,therefore,with  a  young  man 


24  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

is,  What  am  I  to  be?  and  that  the  future  looks 
rather  gloomy  until  the  life-path  opens.  The 
lot  of  many  a  girl,  especially  of  many  a  girl 
with  a  rich  father,  is  a  tragedy  of  aimlessness. 
Social  standards,  and  her  lack  of  true  ideals 
and  of  real  education,  have  condemned  her  to 
be  frittered  :  from  twelve  years  old  she  is  a 
cripple  to  be  pitied,  and  by  thirty  she  comes 
to  know  it.  With  the  brothers  the  blame  is 
more  their  own.  The  boys  we  used  to  play 
our  school-games  with  have  found  their  places; 
they  are  winning  homes  and  influence  and 
money,  their  natures  are  growing  strong  and 
shapely,  and  their  days  are  filling  with  the  hap- 
py sense  of  accomplishment, — while  we  do  not 
yet  know  what  we  are.  We  have  no  meaning 
on  the  earth.  Lose  us,  and  the  earth  has  lost 
nothing;  no  niche  is  empty,  no  force  has  ceased 
to  play,  for  we  have  got  no  aim  and  therefore 
we  are  still — nobody.  Get  your  meanings  first 
of  all!  Ask  the  question  until  it  is  answered 
past  question,  What  am  I?  What  do  I  stand 
for?  What  name  do  I  bear  in  the  register  of 
forces?  In  our  national  cemeteries  there  are 
rows  on  rows  of   unknown    bodies    of  our  sol- 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY  25 

diers, — men  who  did  a  work  and  put  a  meaning 
to  their  lives;  for  the  mother  and  the  towns- 
men say,  "He  died  in  the  war."  But  the  men 
and  women  whose  lives  are  aimless,  reverse 
their  fates.  Our  bodies  are  known,  and  answer 
in  this  world  to  such  or  such  a  name, — but  as 
to  our  inner  selves,  with  real  and  awful  mean- 
ing our  walking  bodies  might  be  labeled,  "An 
unknown  man  sleeps  here!" 

Now  since  it  is  concentration  that  prevents 
this  tragedy  of  failure,  and  since  this  concen- 
tration always  involves  drudgery,  long,  hard, 
abundant,  we  have  to  own  again,  I  think,  that 
that  is  even  more  than  what  I  called  it  first, — 
our  chief  school-master ;  besides  that,  drudg- 
ery is  the  gray  Angel  of  Success.  The  main 
secret  of  any  success  we  may  hope  to  rejoice 
in,  is  in  that  angel's  keeping.  Look  at  the 
leaders  in  the  profession,  the  "solid"  men  in 
business,  the  master-workmen  who  begin  as 
poor  boys  and  end  by  building  a  town  in  which 
to  house  their  factory-hands ;  they  are  drudges 
of  the  single  aim.  The  man  of  science,  and 
to-day  more  than  ever,  if  he  would  add  to  the 
world's  knowledge,  or  even    get  a    reputation, 


26  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

must  be,in  some  one  branch  at  least,  a  plod- 
ding specialist.  The  great  inventors,  Palissy 
at  his  pots, Goodyear  at  his  rubber,Elias  Howe 
at  his  sewing-machine,  tell  the  secret, — "One 
thing  I  do."  The  reformer's  secret  is  the  same. 
A  one-eyed,  grim-jawed  folk  the  reformers  are 
apt  to  be:  one-eyed,  grim- jawed,  seeing  but  the 
one  thing,  never  letting  go,  they  have  to  be, 
to  start  a  torpid  nation.  All  these  men  as 
doers  of  the  single  thing  drudge  their  way  to 
their  success.  Even  so  must  we,  would  we  win 
ours.  The  foot-loose  man  is  not  the  enviable 
man.  A  wise  man  will  be  his  own  necessity 
and  bind  himself  to  a  task,  if  by  early  wealth 
or  foolish  parents  or  other  lowering  circum- 
stances he  has  lost  the  help  of  an  outward  ne- 
cessity. Dale  Owen  in  his  autobiography  told 
the  story  of  a  foot-loose  man,  ruined  by  his 
happy  circumstances.  It  was  his  father's  friend, 
one  born  to  princely  fortune,  educated  with  the 
best,  married  happily,  with  children  growing 
up  around  him.  All  that  health  and  wealth 
and  leisure  and  taste  could  give,  were  his. 
Robert  Owen,  an  incessant  worker,  once  went 
to  spend  a  rare  rest-moment  with    him    at  his 


BLESSED    liE    DRUDGERY  27 

country-seat,  one  of  the  great  English  parks. 
To  the  tired  man,  who  had  earned  the  peace, 
the  quiet  days  seemed  perfect,  and  at  last  he 
said  to  his  host,  "I  have  been  thinking  that, 
if  I  ever  met  a  man  who  had  nothing  to  desire, 
you  must  be  he  :  are  you  not  completely  hap- 
py?" The  answer  came:  "Happy!  Ah,  Mr. 
Owen,  I  committed  one  fatal  error  in  my 
youth,  and  dearly  have  I  paid  for  it!  I  started 
in  life  without  an  object,  almost  without  an 
ambition.  I  said  to  myself,  T  have  all  that 
I  see  others  contending  for;  why  should  I 
struggle?'  I  knew  not  the  curse  that  lights 
on  those  who  have  never  to  struggle  for  any- 
thing. I  ought  to  have  created  for  myself  some 
definite  pursuit,  no  matter  what,  so  that  there 
would  be  something  to  labor  for  and  to  over- 
come. Then  I  might  have  been  happy."  Said 
Owen  to  him,  "Come  and  spend  a  month  with 
me  at  Braxfield.  You  have  a  larger  share  in  the 
mills  than  any  of  us  partners.  Come  and  see  for 
yourself  what  has  been  done  for  the  work-peo- 
ple there  and  for  their  children;  and  give  me 
your  aid."  "It  is  too  late,"  was  the  reply; 
"the  power  is  gone.   Habits  are  become  chains. 


28  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

You  can  work  and  do  good;  but  for  7ne, — in 
all  the  profitless  5^ears  gone  by  I  seek  vainly 
for  something  to  remember  with  pride,  or  even 
to  dwell  on  with  satisfaction.  I  have  thrown 
away  a  life." — And  he  had  only  one  life  in  this 
world  to  lose. 

Again  then,  I  sa}^,  Let  us  sing  a  hallelujah 
and  make  a  fresh  beatitude  :  Blessed  be  Drudg- 
ery!   It  is  the  one  thing  we  can  not  spare. 


Ill 


This  is  a  hard  gospel,  is  it  not?  But  now 
there  is  a  pleasanter  word  to  briefly  say.  To 
lay  the  firm  foundations  in  ourselves,  or  even 
to  win  success  in  life,  we  must  be  drudges. 
But  we  can  be  artists,  also,  in  our  daily  task. 
And  at  that  word  things  brighten. 

"Artists,"  I  say,— not  artisans.  "The  differ- 
ence?" This:  the  artist  is  he  who  strives  to 
perfect  his  v/ork, — the  artisan  strives  to  get 
through  it.  The  artist  would  fain  finish,  too; 
but  with  him  it  is  to  "finish  the  work  God  has 
given  me  to  do!"     It  is  not  how  great  a  thing 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY  29 

we  do,  but  how  well  we  do  the  thing  we  have 
to,  that  puts  us  in  the  noble  brotherhood  of 
artists.  My  Real  is  not  my  Ideal, — is  that  my 
complaint?  One  thing,  at  least,  is  in  my  power  : 
if  I  can  not  realize  ray  Ideal,  I  can  at  least 
idealize  my  Real.  How?  By  trying  to  be  per- 
fect in  it.  If  I  am  but  a  rain-drop  in  a  shower, 
I  will  be,  at  least,  a  perfect  drop;  if  but  a  leaf 
in  a  whole  June,  I  will  be,  at  least,  a  perfect 
leaf.  This  poor  "one  thing  I  do," — instead  of 
repining  at  its  lowness  or  its  hardness,  I  will 
make  it  glorious  by  my  supreme  loyalty  to 
its  demand. 

An  artist  himself  shall  speak.  It  was  Michael 
Angelo  who  said,  "Nothing  makes  the  soul  so 
pure,  so  religious,  as  the  endeavor  to  create 
something  perfect;  for  God  is  perfection,  and 
whoever  strives  for  it  strives  for  something 
that  is  God-like.  True  painting  is  only  an 
image  of  God's  perfection, — a  shadow  of  the 
pencil  with  which  he  paints,  a  melody,  a  striv- 
ing after  harmony. "  The  great  masters  in 
music,  the  great  masters  in  all  that  we  call 
artistry,  would  echo  Michael  Angelo  in  this; 
he  speaks   the   artist-essence    out.     But    what 


30  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

holds  good  upon  their  grand  scale  and  with 
those  whose  names  are  known,  holds  equally 
good  of  all  pursuits  and  all  lives.  That  true 
painting  is  an  image  of  God's  perfection  must 
be  true,  if  he  sa37s  so ;  but  no  more  true  of 
painting  than  of  shoe-making,  of  Michael  An- 
gelo  than  of  John  Pounds  the  cobbler.  I  asked 
a  cobbler  once  how  long  it  took  to  become  a 
good  shoe-maker;  he  answered  promptly,  "Six 
years, — and  then  you  must  travel!"  That  cob- 
bler had  the  artist-soul.  I  told  a  friend  the 
story,  and  he  asked  his  cobbler  the  same  ques- 
tion:  How  long  does  it  take  to  become  a  good 
shoe-maker?  "All  your  life,  sir."  That  was 
still  better, — a  Michael  Angelo  of  shoes!  Mr. 
Maydole,  the  hammer-maker  of  central  New 
York,  was  an  artist:  "Yes,"  said  he  to  Mr. 
Parton,  "I  have  made  hammers  here  for  twenty- 
eight  years. "  "Well,  then,  you  ought  to  be  able 
to  make  a  pretty  good  hammer  by  this  time." 
"No,  sir,"  was  the  answer,  "I  7iever  made  a 
pretty  good  hammer.  I  make  the  best  ham- 
mer made  in  the  United  States."  Daniel  Mor- 
ell,  once  president  of  the  Cambria  rail-works 
in  Pittsburg,  which  employed  seven    thousand 


BLESSED   BE    DRUDGERY  3I 

men,  was  an  artist,  and  trained  artists.  "What 
is  the  secret  of  such  a  development  of  busi- 
ness as  this?"  asked  the  visitor.  "We  have 
no  secret, "  was  the  answer;  "we  always  try  to 
beat  our  last  batch  of  rails.  That's  all  the 
secret  we  have,  and  we  don't  care  who  knows 
it."  The  Paris  book-binder  was  an  artist, 
who,  when  the  rare  volume  of  Corneille,  dis- 
covered in  a  book-stall,  was  brought  to  him, 
and  he  was  asked  how  long  it  would  take  him 
to  bind  it,  answered,  "Oh,  sir,  you  must  give 
me  a  year,  at  least;  this  needs  all  my  care." 
Our  Ben  Franklin  showed  the  artist,  when  he 
began  his  ovv^n  epitaph,  "Benjamin  Franklin, 
printer."  And  Professor  Agassiz,  when  he  told 
the  interviewer  that  he  had  "no  time  to  make 
money;"  and  when  he  began  his  will,  "I, 
Louis  Agassiz,  teacher." 

In  one  of  Murillo's  pictures  in  the  Louvre 
hs  shows  us  the  interior  of  a  convent  kitchen; 
but  doing  the  work  there  are,  not  mortals  in 
old  dresses,  but  beautiful  white-winged  angels. 
One  serenely  puts  the  kettle  on  the  fire  to  boil, 
and  one  is  lifting  up  a  pail  of  water  with  heav- 
enly grace,  and  one  is   at   the  kitchen-dresser 


32  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

reaching  up  for  plates;  and  I  believe  there  is 
a  little  cherub  running  about  and  getting  in 
the  way,  trying  to  help.  What  the  old  monk- 
ish legend  that  it  represented  is,  I  hardly  know. 
But  as  the  painter  puts  it  to  you  on  his  can- 
vas, all  are  so  busy,  and  working  with  such  a 
will,  and  so  refining  the  work  as  they  do  it, 
that  somehow  you  forget  that  pans  are  pans 
and  pots  pots,  and  only  think  of  the  angels, 
and  how  very  natural  and  beautiful  kitchen- 
work  is, — just  what  the  angels  v/ould  do,  of 
course. 

It  is  the  angel-aim  and  standard  in  an  act 
that  consecrates  it.  He  who  aims  for  perfect- 
ness  in  a  trifle  is  trying  to  do  that  trifle  holily. 
The  trier  wears  the  halo,  and  therefore  the 
halo  grows  as  quickly  round  the  brows  of 
peasant  as  of  king.  This  aspiration  to  do  per- 
fectly,— is  it  not  religion  practicalized?  If  we 
use  the  name  of  God,  is  this  not  God's  pres- 
ence becoming  actor  in  us?  No  need,  then, 
of  being  "great"  to  share  that  aspiration  and 
that  presence.  The  smallest  roadside  pool  has 
its  water  from  heaven,  and  its  gleam  from  the 
sun,  and  can  hold    the    stars  in    its  bosom,  as 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY  33 

well  as  the  great  ocean.  Even  so  the  humblest 
man  or  woman  can  live  splendidly!  That  is 
the  royal  truth  that  we  need  to  believe, — you 
and  I  who  have  no  "mission,"  and  no  great 
sphere  to  move  in.  The  universe  is  not  quite 
complete  without  my  work  well  done.  Have 
you  ever  read  George  Eliot's  poem  called 
"Stradivarius"?  Stradivarius  was  the  famous 
old  violin-maker,  whose  violins,  nearly  two 
centuries  old,  are  almost  worth  their  weight 
in  gold  to-day.  Says  Stradivarius  in  the  poem, — 

"If  my  hand  slacked, 
I  should  rob  God, — since  he  is  fullest  good, — • 
Leaving  a  blank  instead  of  violins. 
He  could  not  make  Antonio  Stradivari's  violins 
Without  Antonio." 

That  is  just  as  true  of  us  as  of  our  greatest 
brothers.  What,  stand  with  slackened  hands 
and  fallen  heart  before  the  littleness  of  your 
service!  Too  little,  is  it,  to  be  perfect  in  it? 
Would  you,  then,  if  you  v/ere  Master,  risk 
a  greater  treasure  in  the  hands  of  such  a  man? 
Oh,  there  is  no  man,  no  woman,  so  small  that 
they  can  not  make  their  life  great  by  high  en- 
deavor; no  sick  crippled  child  on  its  bed  that 


34  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

can  not  fill  a  niche  of  service  that  way  in  the 
world.  This  is  the  beginning  of  all  Gospels, — 
that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand  just 
where  we  are.  It  is  just  as  near  us  as  our 
work  is,  for  the  gate  of  heaven  for  each  soul 
lies  in  the  endeavor  to  do  that  work  perfectly. 
But  to  bend  this  talk  back  to  the  word  with 
which  we  started  :  will  this  striving  for  per- 
fection in  the  little  thing  give  "culture"?  Have 
you  ever  watched  such  striving  in  operation? 
Have  you  never  met  humble  men  and  women 
who  read  little,  who  knew  little,  yet  who  had 
a  certain  fascination  as  of  fineness  lurking  about 
them?  Know  them,  and  you  are  likely  to  find 
them  persons  who  have  put  so  much  thought 
and  honesty  and  conscientious  trying  into  their 
common  work, — it  may  be  sweeping  rooms,  or 
planing  boards,  or  painting  walls, — have  put 
their  ideals  so  long,  so  constantly,  so  lovingly 
into  that  common  work  of  theirs,  that  finally 
these  qualities  have  come  to  permeate  not  their 
work  only,  but  so  much  of  their  being,  that 
they  are  fine-fibred  v/ithin,  even  if  on  the  out- 
side the  rough  bark  clings.  Without  being 
schooled,  they  are  apt  to    instinctively   detect 


BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY  35 

a  sham, — one  test  of  culture.  Without  haunt- 
ing the  drawing-rooms,  they  are  likely  to  have 
manners  of  quaint  grace  and  graciousness, — 
another  test  of  culture.  Without  the  singing- 
lessons,  their  tones  are  apt  to  be  gentle, — an- 
other test  of  culture.  Without  knowing  any- 
thing about  Art,  so-called,  they  know  and 
love  the  best  in  one  thing, — are  artists  in  their 
own  little  specialty  of  work.  They  make  good 
company,  these  men  and  women, — why?  Be- 
cause, not  having  been  able  to  realize  their 
Ideal,  they  have  idealized  their  Real,  and  thus 
in  the  depths  of  their  nature  have  won  true 
"culture." 

You  know  all  Beatitudes  are  based  on  some- 
thing hard  to  do  or  to  be.  "Blessed  are  the 
meek:  "  is  it  easy  to  be  meek?  "Blessed  are 
the  pure  in  heart:"  is  that  so  very  easy? 
"Blessed  are  they  who  mourn."  "Blessed  are 
they  who  hunger  and  thirst — who  starve — 
after  righteousness."  So  this  new  beatitude 
by  its  hardness  only  falls  into  line  with  all  the 
rest.  A  third  time  and  heartily  I  say  it, — 
"Blessed  be  Drudgery!"  For  thrice  it  blesses 
us:    it  gives    us    the   fundamental    qualities  of 


36  BLESSED    BE    DRUDGERY 

manhood  and  womanhood;  it  gives  us  success 
in  the  thing  we  have  to  do;  and  it  makes  us, 
if  we  choose,  artists, — artists  within,  whatever 
our  outward  work  may  be.  Blessed  be  Drudg- 
ery,— the  secret  of  all  Culture! 


FAITHFULNESS 
"She  hath  done  what  she  could." — Mark  xiv:  8. 

And  yet  how  little  it  was  that  she  did  do! 
Look  at  the  two  figures  in  this  picture,  and 
mark  the  contrast.  On  this  hand  one  of  the 
great  world-reformers,  the  founder  of  Christian- 
ity, is  being  caught  in  the  clutches  of  mad- 
dened bigotry.  He  is  spit  upon  and  threat- 
ened by  the  presumptuous  dignitaries  of  the 
land.  He  is  scorned  by  the  scholarly,  almost 
forsaken  by  his  friends,  probably  abandoned 
by  his  relations, — save  that  one  who  never 
ceases  to  cling  to  the  most  forsaken  child  of 
earth, — the  mother.  The  fate  of  an  evil-doer 
is  bearing  dov/n  upon  him, the  inevitable  agony 
of  the  cross  is  before  him,  there  seems  to  be 
no  honorable  chance  of  escape,  there  is  no 
effort  being  made  to  save  him. 

On  that  hand  is  a  poor,  weak,  unnamed  and 
37 


38  FAITHFULNESS 

unheralded  woman;  a  woman  with  little  influ- 
ence and  less  means.  Her  vision  is  neces- 
sarily very  limited.  She  can  poorly  understand 
the  questions  at  issue.  What  does  she  know 
of  the  philosophies  and  the  theologies,  the 
law  and  the  prophets,  which  engage  the  atten- 
tion of  the  excited  and  disputing  groups  at 
the  street  corners?  She  can  plan  no  release, 
she  can  frame  no  defense,  she  can  not  speak  a 
word  in  his  justification.  Limited  so  in  time, 
strength,  means,  influence  and  knowledge,  what 
can  she  do? 

She  can  love  him.  She  can  give  of  her 
heart's  best  affection.  She  can  be  true  to  that 
inexpressible  attraction, that  towering  nobility, 
that  she  feels.  She  knows  that  the  gentle 
one  is  hated.  She  can  read  sorrow  upon  his 
benign  face;  she  can  discover  loneliness  in 
his  tender  eyes,  and  she  can  take  his  side. 
She  dares  cling  to  him  in  the  face  of  derision 
and  weep  for  him  in  defiance  to  the  mocking 
crowd.  She  can  with  willing  hands  bring  what 
seems  to  her  to  be  the  only  precious  thing  in 
her  possession.  She  can  break  the  flask  that 
contains  what  is  probably  her  own  burial  oint- 


FAITHFULNESS  39 

ment  upon  his  head.  This  she  can  do,  and 
how  little  it  seems!  She  dreams  of  no  future 
fame  for  him  or  for  herself.  She  knows  lit- 
tle of  the  poetic  significance  or  symbolic  fit- 
ness of  the  act.  Merited  seems  the  contempt 
of  the  lookers  on.  Why  the  approving  words 
of  Jesus?  Why  the  perpetuation  of  the  story? 
Because  she  gave  all  she  had;  she  said  all 
she  knew;  she  loved  with  all  her  heart.  Be- 
cause she  '\iui  what  she  could."  Can  mind 
conceive  of  higher  commendation  than  this? 
Where  is  the  hero  of  successful  wars,  the  ex- 
plorer of  unknown  countries;  where  is  the  cap- 
italist who  has  established  commerce,  encour- 
aged industries,  founded  homes  for  the  needy 
or  schools  for  the  ignorant;  where  is  the  states- 
man who  has  blessed  his  nation  ;  the  philan- 
thropist who  has  lifted  burdens  from  the  op- 
pressed; the  moralist  who  has  saved  souls  from 
sin,  dried  up  cesspools  of  human  corruption, 
lifted  the  inebriate  into  sobriety;  where  is  the 
prophet  of  religion  who  has  led  souls  heaven- 
ward and  touched  restless  hearts  with  the 
peace  of  God,  that  deserves  any  higher  commen- 
dation than  this  unnamed  woman  of  Bethany? 


40  FAITHFULNESS 

She  did  what  she  could:  none  of  those  could 
do  more.  While  that  woman's  tears  fell  upon 
the  head  of  the  persecuted,  and  her  fingers 
passed  through  the  ringlets  of  the  brow  that 
was  so  soon  to  be  pierced  by  the  thorns  in  the 
derisive  crown,  she  was  the  peer  of  the  noblest 
child  of  God.  During  that  brief  moment,  at 
least,  the  anointed  and  the  anointer  stood  on 
a  comm.on  level  ;  they  were  equal  children  of 
the  Most  High;  she  did  what  she  could,  and 
the  very  Lord  from  heaven  could  do  no  more. 
"She  hath  done  what  she  could."  This  is 
not  the  text  but  the  sermon.  There  is  scarcely 
need  of  expansion.  The  heart  promptly  en- 
larges upon  it,  applications  rush  through  the 
mind,  and  the  conscience  recognizes  the  test 
and  asks, — How  far  do  we  deserve  this  envi- 
able commendation  that  was  given  to  the  Beth- 
any woman?  Are  we  doing  what  we  can,  as 
she  did,  to  defend  the  right  and  encourage  the 
dutiful?  Are  we  doing  all  we  can  to  console 
the  outcast  and  the  despondent  around  us? 
Are  we  doing  what  we  can  to  elevate  our  lives 
and  to  ennoble  our  calling?  Are  we  doing, 
simply,  what  we  can  to  stem  the  subtle  tide  of 


FAITHFULNESS  4I 

corruption,  to  stay  the  insidious  currents  of 
dissipation  that  eddy  about  us  as  they  did  the 
Bethany  woman  of  long  ago?  This  story  comes 
to  us  with  its  searching  questions,  measuring 
our  efforts  to  resist  the  flood  of  grossness, 
sectarian  pride  and  arrogance  that  seeks  to 
overwhelm  gentleness,  tender  feeling  and  lov- 
ing thought,  here  and  now  in  America  as  then 
and  there  in  Judea. 

Young  men  and  women,  the  sermon  of  the 
hour  for  you  is  in  the  words  "She  hath  done 
what  she  could."  Let  it  preach  to  you  of  the 
work  you  have  to  do  in  these  high  and  rare 
years  of  youth  that  are  so  rapidly  gliding  by. 
Do  what  you  can  towards  bringing  out  the 
noblest  possibilities  of  your  nature.  Do  what 
you  can  to  think  high  thoughts,  to  love  true 
things  and  to  do  noble  deeds.  Temptations 
beset  you  like  those  that  have  filled  hearts  as 
light  as  yours  with  inexpressible  sorrow.  Are 
you  doing  what  you  can  to  make  yourself 
strong  to  resist  them?  Before  you  hang  the 
gilded  trinkets  of  fashions,  the  embroidered 
banners  of  selfish  lives.  Do  what  you  can  to 
live  for  higher  aims   than    these.      Your    lives 


42  FAITHFULNESS 

are  growing  riper,your  heads  are  growing  wiser. 
Are  you  doing  what  you  can  to  balance  this 
with  growth  of  heart,  making  the  affections  as 
much  richer  and  warmer;  the  conscience,  God's 
best  gift  to  man,  brighter  and  more  command- 
ing? Are  you  doing  what  you  can  to  follow 
your  truest  and  to  do  your  best? 

Mothers,  you  dream  of  homes  made  sacred 
by  holy  influences  into  which  the  dwarfing  ex- 
citements of  superficial  life,  fashion  and  sen- 
sation, that  so  endanger  your  children,  may 
not  enter;  are  you  doing  all  you  can  to  realize 
this  dream? 

Fathers,  are  you  doing  what  you  can  toward 
leaving  your  children  that  inestimable  herit- 
age, a  noble  example;  the  record  of  a  life  of 
uncompromising  integrity,  a  sublime  devotion 
to  truth,  a  quiet  but  never  failing  loyalty  to 
conscience? 

To  all  of  us,  young  and  old,  men  and  wom- 
en, this  scene  in  the  house  of  Simon  the  leper 
comes  across  the  feverish  centuries  with  its 
quiet  sermon,  asking  us  if  we  are  as  faithful 
to  the  best  impulses  of  our  natures  as  this 
woman  was  to  hers;  if    we  are   doing  what  we 


FAITHFULNESS  43 

can  to  testify  to  the  gospel  of  love  and  patience, 
working  with  all  the  power  we  have  to  dispel 
the  clouds  of  superstition  that  overhang  the 
world;  doing  the  little  we  can  to  break  the 
fetters  of  bigotry,  to  increase  the  love  and  good 
will  of  the  world  ;  toward  making  our  religion 
a  life  and  our  life  in  turn  a  religion  of  love 
and  self  sacrifice.  Are  we  breaking  a  single  flask 
of  precious  ointment  in  disinterested  self-for- 
getfulness  in  behalf  of  any  oppressed  and  in- 
jured child  of  the  Eternal  Father?  Are  we 
simply  striving  the  best  we  may  to 

"Look  up  and  not  down, 
Look  out  and  not  in, 
Look  forward  and  not  back, 
And  lend  a  hand"? 

Now,  as  then,  the  real  struggle  of  life  is  not 
for  bread  and  clothing,  but  for  ideas,  for  truth 
and  purity  ;  into  this  higher  struggle  this  peas- 
ant woman  of  Bethany  entered  and  did  what 
she  could.      Are  we  doing  as  much? 

Alas!  the  sad  truth  is  too  patent  to  need 
statement.  Rare  are  the  souls  who  live  on 
these  Bethany  heights  of  consecration  and 
good    will.     The     humiliating     confession    is 


44  FAITHFULNESS 

forced  from  our  lips  that  none  of  us  do  all 
that  we  can  for  these  high  things;  and  the 
second  question  of  our  sermon  presses, — Why 
is  it  thus?  And  to  this  I  find  two  fatal  and 
almost  universal  answers,  namely: 

1.  We  hardly  think  it  worth  while,  because 
what  we  can  do  is  so  little. 

2.  We  are  ashamed  to  try,  for  fear  people 
will  laugh  at  us. 

Let  us  look  to  these  answers.  First,  then, 
we  hardly  think  it  pays;  we  doubt  if  an3'thing 
is  accomplished.  We  have  so  little  faith  in 
the  efficacy  of  all  that  we  can  do.  This  is  be- 
cause we  are  still  in  the  bondage  of  matter. 
We  are  still  enslaved  in  the  feeling  that  the 
material  quantity  is  of  more  importance  than 
the  spiritual  quality  of  our  lives.  We  forget 
that  it  is  not  what,  but  how,  we  do,  that  de- 
termines our  character.  The  Almighty  in  his 
providence  does  not  ask  of  us  uniform  rents 
for  our  rights  and  lives,  as  earthly  landlords 
sometimes  do.  He  only  asks  for  the  rightful 
use  of  the  talents  entrusted  to  us.  The  taxes 
of  Heaven  are  never  per  capita,  but  always  pro 
rata.     Not  the  formal  observance  of  each  and 


FAITHFULNESS  45 

all  alike,  but  every  heart's  best  love,  every 
hand's  readiest  service.  Not  the  number  of 
acres  you  till,  but  the  quality  of  your  tilling 
determines  the  profit  of  the  harvest  in  spirit- 
ual as  in  material  farming.  This  standard 
exacts  no  promises,  but  it  accepts  no  apolo- 
gies, for  there  is  no  occasion  for  apology  when 
you  have  done  all  you  can,  and  until  that  is 
done  no  apologies  are  accepted.  "Oh,  if  I 
were  not  so  poor,  had  more  time,  strength  or 
money!"  Hush!  from  the  loyal  Bethany  sister 
comes  the  gentle  rebuke,  "She  hath  done  what 
she  could;"  do  thou  as  much  and  cease  your 
bemoaning.  But  you  say,  "I  would  so  like  to 
build  a  church,  to  establish  a  hospital,  to  found 
a  home  for  the  afflicted,  if  I  only  could."  Not 
you,  unless  out  of  your  present  revenue  you 
have  a  tear  for  the  unfortunate,  a  hope  in  your 
heart  for  him  who  has  no  hope  for  himself,  a 
smile  and  a  word  for  the  sad  and  lonely  that 
go  about  you  ;  or  should  you  build  a  hospital 
or  found  a  home,  they  would  scarcely  carry  a 
blessing,  for  within  their  walls  there  would  be 
no  aroma  of  the  precious  ointment  drawn  from 
the  flask  of  holy  sacrifice.     It  is  the  fragrance 


46  FAITHFULNESS 

of  consecrated  souls  alone  that  is  helpful.  This 
age  is  in  danger  of  being  cursed  with  too  many 
so-called  "charitable  institutions,"  built  with 
the  refuse  of  rich  men's  pocket-books,  the  rag 
ends  of  selfish  fortunes;  "institutions"  with 
no  cement  stronger  than  the  mason's  mortar 
to  keep  the  walls  together  ;  institutions  in  which 
there  is  no  heat  to  protect  the  inmates  from 
winter's  cold  save  that  which  comes  from  a 
furnace  in  the  cellar,  and  no  cooling  balm  in 
summer  to  alla}^  the  feverish  pulse  save  that 
found  in  a  physician's  prescription;  no  relig- 
ious consecration, no  precious  ointment  poured 
by  hands  willing  to  do  all  they  can. 

"If  I  only  had  speech  and  the  knowledge 
adequate,  I  v/ould  so  gladly  testify  to  the  faith 
that  is  in  me  ;  I  would  advocate  the  precious 
doctrine, — but — but — " 

Hold!  Restrain  the  impiety  of  that  "but." 
"She  hath  done  what  she  could."  An  advocacy 
more  eloquent  than  speech  is  possible  to  you. 
A  kind  heart  is  a  better  vindication  of  your 
doctrine  than  any  argument.  Deeds  go  further 
than  words  in  justifying  your  creed.  Character, 
and  not  logic,  is  the  credential  to  be  offered  at 


FAITHFULNESS  47 

Heaven's  gate;  conduct  is  higher  than  confes- 
sion ;  being  more  fundamental  than  doing. 
"She  hath  done  what  she  could."  There  is  a 
potency  in  this  standard  greater  than  in  any 
of  your  dogmas;  a  salvation  higher  than  can 
be  found  in  words  or  forms,  however  high  or 
noble. 

The  master  voice  of  Jesus  in  this  sentence 
pleads  with  us  to  put  no  skeptical  measure 
upon  the  power  of  a  loving  soul,  the  strength 
of  a  willing  heart.  The  power  of  that  Bethany 
woman  is  an  open  secret:  the  fame  that  came 
unsought  is  but  the  world's  glad  tribute  to  the 
forces  it  most  loves.  This  standard  always  par- 
takes of  the  inspiration  of  the  Most  High. 
Friends,  we  have  not  faith  enough  in  the  far- 
reaching  power  of  every  soul's  best.  You  re- 
call the  dark  days  of  1861  to  1865,  the  time 
when  the  nation  was  being  riddled  by  traitor- 
ous bullets,  when  acres  of  southern  soil  were 
being  covered  by  the  bleeding  sons  of  the 
North.  They  were  days  when  school-boys 
were  translated  into  heroes  by  the  tap  of  a 
drum,  ploughmen  were  transformed  into  field 
marshals,  women  were  stirred  with  more  than 


48  FAITHFULNESS 

masculine  heroism,  as  the  avenues  of  war  be- 
came clogged  with  their  commerce  of  love. 
How  their  fingers  flew,  how  the  supplies  of 
lint,  bandages  and  delicacies  poured  in  from 
hamlet  and  country-side!  Then  there  was  none 
too  weak,  too  busy  or  too  poor  to  make  a  con- 
tribution to  that  tiding  life  that  made  the  atroc- 
ities of  war  contribute  to  the  gospel  of  peace, 
and  used  the  horrors  of  the  battle-field  to  teach 
the  sweet  humanities. 

Thirty-five  years  ago,  millions  of  human 
beings  were  chained  in  slavery  in  America. 
They  were  driven  to  the  auction-block  like 
fettered  cattle,  the  sanctities  of  home  were 
ruthlessly  violated,  the  sacred  rights  of  the 
human  soul  were  trampled  upon,  and  all  this 
sanctioned  by  intelligent  commonwealths,  and 
authorized  by  a  powerful  government. 

What  could  an  unknown  printer  do;  what 
could  a  busy  matron  distracted  by  domes- 
tic cares,  surrounded  by  a  houseful  of  chil- 
dren, accomplish?  They  could  open  their 
hearts  and  let  the  woes  of  their  fellow-beings 
in,  they  could  imitate  the  Bethany  woman  and 
do  all  they  could ;  and  this  became  the  mighty 


FAITHFULNESS  49 

inspiration  which  gave  to  our  country  William 
Lloyd  Garrison,  its  greatest  moral  hero,  and 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  its  greatest  novel  and 
most  famous  and  prolific   book. 

Miserable  indeed  were  the  prison-pens  of 
Europe  a  century  ago  ;  barbarous  was  the  treat- 
ment of  the  vicious  ;  arbitrary,  cruel,  and  often- 
times stupid  and  brutal,  v/ere  the  officials  into 
whose  custody  these  moral  invalids  were  en- 
trusted. A  gentle  soul  housed  in  a  puny  body 
felt  all  this,  but  he  was  untitled,  unknown, 
was  considered  a  dunce,  at  school  always  at 
the  foot  of  his  class.  What  could  he  do?  He 
could  do  as  much  as  the  Bethany  woman  did, 
he  did  do  all  he  could,  and  by  doing  that  he 
revolutionized  the  prison  systems  of  Europe, 
and  wrote  the  name  of  John  Howard  in  letters 
of  light  high  upon  that  obelisk  dedicated  to 
earth's  immortals  and  reared  in  the  heart  of 
humanity. 

Paul,  studying  the  prospects  of  a  new  gos- 
pel, looked  out  upon  an  inhospitable  world. 
Things  looked  very  unfavorable;  the  first 
teacher  had  met  the  fate  of  a  criminal ;  mighty 
Rome  stretched  far  and  near  with  her  religious 


50  FAITHFULNESS 

indifference  on  the  one  hand,  and  Jewry  with 
its  persecuting  bigots  and  jealous  sectarians  on 
the  other.  Paul  himself,  with  a  "thorn  in  the 
flesh,"  suspected  by  even  the  painful  minority 
to  which  he  belonged,  what  could  he  do?  He 
could  climb  to  that  height  whereon  stood  the 
Bethany  woman,  he  could  break  the  alabaster 
box  which  contained  the  precious  ointment  of 
his  life  for  the  blessed  cause,  and  thus  make 
Christianity  possible.  One  step  still  further 
back.  How  small  were  the  chances  for  success, 
how  unfavorable  were  the  prospects  for  an  hum- 
ble carpenter's  son  in  the  backwoods  of  Gal- 
ilee for  doing  anything  to  improve  the  morals 
and  purify  the  religion  of  the  world!  What 
ridicule  and  contempt  were  in  store  for  him; 
what  disappointment  and  defeat  were  inevita- 
ble! But  he  could  do  what  he  could.  He 
anticipated  his  lowly  sister,  and  out  of  the  full- 
ness of  that  uncalculating  consecration  came 
the  parables  and  the  beatitudes,  the  morality 
of  the  'Golden  Rule'  and  the  piety  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  the  insight  by  the  well  and  the  triumph 
on  Calvary.  Out  of  that  consecration  came  the 
dignity  of  soul  that   has  led    the    centuries  to 


FAITHFULNESS  5I 

mistake  him  for  a  God,  and  that  divine  humil- 
ity that  at  the  same  time  has  led  the  weak  and 
the  ignorant  to  confidently  take  his  hand  as 
that  of  an  elder  brother.  What  potency  there 
is  in  a  human  soul  where  all  its  energies  are 
called  into  action  and  wholly  consecrated,  con- 
secrated after  the  fashion  of  the  Bethany  wom- 
an,— "She  hath  done  what  she  could  !" 

But  let  not  my  illustrations  over-reach  my 
sermon.  I  would  enforce  it  with  no  excep- 
tional achievements, no  unparalleled  excellency. 
What  if  the  approving  words  of  Jesus  in  my 
text  had  fallen  upon  ears  too  dull  to  remem- 
ber them,  and  the  inspiring  story  had  not 
been  told  in  remembrance  of  the  woman 
of  Bethany  throughout  the  whole  world? 
What  if  Mother  Bickerdyke  and  her  asso- 
ciates of  the  Sanitary  Commission  had  been 
forgotten,  and  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  had 
been  a  literary  failure?  Suppose  Lloyd  Gar- 
rison had  been  silenced,  and  John  Howard  had 
failed  to  lessen  the  inhumanity  visited  upon  a 
single  convict  in  all  Europe?  What  if  Paul  had 
been  forgotten  and   the  crucifiers  of  Jesus  had 


52  FAITHFULNESS 

succeeded  in  putting  down  the  great  movement 
of  spirit  which  he  started ;  would  not  these 
records  have  been  as  clear  within  and  above 
for  all  that?  Would  not  God  have  filled  their 
souls  with  the  same  peace  and  blessedness? 
In  God's  sight,  at  least,  would  not  the  service 
have  been  as  holy  and  the  triumph  as  great? 
I  have  cited  but  a  few  illustrations  of  a  law 
that  obtains  throughout  the  universe.  No 
more  assured  is  science  that  no  physical  im- 
pulse ever  dies,  but  goes  on  in  increasing  waves 
toward  the  farthest  confines  of  an  infinite  uni- 
verse, than  are  we  that  every  throb  of  the 
spirit  for  the  best  and  the  truest  over-rides  all 
obstacles,  disarms  all  opposition,  overcomes 
contempt,  and  survives  all  death. 

•'What  is  excellent, 
As  God  lives,  is  permanent." 
«»*■»«•» 

"House  and  tenant  go  to  ground, 
Lost  in  God,  in  God-head  found." 

Just  as  truly  as  every  material  picture  the 
light  of  sun  has  ever  fallen  upon  is  forever 
photographed  somewhere  upon  the  tablets  of 
space,  so  surely    is  every    kindly    smile,    that 


FAITHFULNESS  53 

ever  lit  the  face  of  any  pain-stricken  woman, 
or  calmed  the  storm  in  the  passionate  heart 
of  man,  transformed  into  a  bit  of  everlasting 
light,  that  makes  more  radiant  some  section  of 
the  spiritual   universe, 

"Gone  are  they,  but  I  have  them  in  my  soul!" 
God  is  not  wasteful.  He  poorly  apprehends 
the  Divine  that  regards  him  as  balancing  his 
books  according  to  some  scheme  in  which  the 
glory  or  doom  of  the  mortal  is  determined  by 
some  sacrificial, ceremonial  or  theological  entry; 
a  book-keeping  in  which  kindly  deeds,  pleas- 
ant smiles  and  clieerful  words  are  not  entered. 
The  salvation  of  the  Bethany  v/oman,  and  the 
salvation  we  should  most  covet,  is  the  result 
not  of  faith,  but  of  faithfulness;  not  the  ac- 
ceptance of  a  saving  scheme  proffered  from 
without,  but  loyalty  to  a  saving  grace  spring- 
ing from  within;  not  the  acceptance  of  belief, 
but  the  dispensing  of  kindness.  This  salvation 
which  comes  by  fidelity  finds  its  exemplifica- 
tion not  simply  or  perhaps  chiefly  in  the  mus- 
ter-rolls of  our  churches  and  those  whom  our 
preachers  class  among  the  "saved,"  but  among 
the  uncounted    millions    of  sincere    souls  that 


54  FAITHFULNESS 

are  content  to  do  their  daily  work  faithfully, 
carry  their  nearest  duty  with  patience,  and 
thankfully  live  on  the  near  loves  of  dear  hearts, 
though  they 

"Leave  no  memorial  but  a  world  made  better  by  their 
lives." 

This  Bethany  woman  become  a  saint  in  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Endeavor.  She  is  an 
apostle  of  that  gospel  that  makes  religion  glo- 
rified morality  and  morals  realized  religion; 
that  makes  life,  and  not  doctrine,  the  test  of 
religious  confidence  and  fellowship;  character 
the  only  credential  of  piety;  honesty  the  only 
saviour;  justice  the  "great  judgment-seat"  of 
God,  and  a  loving  spirit  his  atoning  grace. 
This  Bethany  woman  is  a  missionary  of  the 
evangel,  the  good  news  that  helpfulness  to 
one's  neighbor  is  holiness  to  the  Lord;  that 
kindness  is  the  best  evidence  of  a  prayerful 
spirit ;  and  that  the  graces  of  Heaven  are  none 
other  than  the  moralities  of  earth  raised  to  com- 
manding pre-eminence. 

This  faith  that  makes  faithful  enables  us  to 
rest  in  our  humblest  endeavor.  It  is  not  for 
him  who  sits  at  this  end  of  yon  telegraph  line, 


FAITHFULNESS  ^^ 

and  with  deft  and  diligent  fingers  transmits 
the  message  into  its  electric  veins,  to  anxiously 
stop  and  query  whether  it  will  ever  reach  its 
destination,  and  to  wonder  who  is  to  receive 
and  transcribe  it  upon  its  arrival.  That  is  not 
his  business.  The  management  is  adequate 
to  that  work.  Other  minds  and  hands  will 
attend  to  that.  It  is  for  him  faithfully  to 
transmit.  So,  friends,  it  is  not  for  us  to  query 
the  efficacy  of  those  small  acts;  the  saving 
power  of  these  lowly  graces  ;  the  daily,  hourly 
messages  of  humble  faithfulness.  It  is  only 
for  us  to  transmit :  the  Infinite  will  receive 
the  dispatches.  Like  faithful  soldiers,  it  is 
"ours  not  to  reason  why"  but  to  ^o,  and,  if  need 
be,  die. 

The  lawyer  may  not,  can  not,  purify  his  pro- 
fession; but  he  can  be  a  pure  member  in 
it.  The  merchant  can  not  stop  the  in- 
iquitous practices  of  trade,  but  he  can  be  an 
honest  merchant  or  else  go  out  of  the  bus- 
iness. The  mother  may  not  be  able  to  keep 
down  the  shallow  standards  that  bewitch  her 
daughters;  but  she  can  pitch  the  key  of  her 
own  life  so  high  that  the   dignity   of  her   soul 


56  FAITHFUI-NESS 

will  rebuke  these  standards  and  disarm  them 
of  their  power.  The  father  may  not  be  able  to 
keep  his  sons  from  temptations,  but  he  can 
himself  desist  from  the  filthy  habit,  the  loose 
language,  the  indifferent  life,  that  his  admiring 
child  is  more  likely  to  copy  from  him  than  from 
any  one  else.  Our  lives  can  not  escape  dis- 
appointments and  weaknesses  ;  but  if  we  could 
only  have  faith  in  the  efficacy  of  doing  all  we 
can,  until  faith  ripens  into  faithfulness,  there 
would  flow  into  our  lives  a  sweetness,  a  whole- 
someness,  a  strength  and  a  peace  that  will  ul- 
timately overflow  into  the  world  and  into  eter- 
nity. Studying  thus,  we  shall  find  in  this  brief 
story  the  secret  of  a  salvation  that  most  of 
the  creeds  miss. 

"What  shall  I  do  to  be  forever  known?" 

"Thy  duty  ever." 
"This  did  full  many  who  yet  slept  unknown." 
"Oh,  never,  never! 
Thinkest  thou  perchance  that  they  remain  unknown 

Whom  thou  know'stnot? 
By  angel  trumps  in  Heaven  their  praise  is  blown — 
Divine  their  lot." 

"What  shall  I  do  to  gain  eternal  life?" 
"Discharge  aright 


FAITHFULNESS  57 

The  simple  dues  with  which  each  day  is  rife, 

Yea,  with  thy  might. 
Ere  perfect  scheme  of  action  thou  devise, 

Will  life  be  fled, 
While  he,  who  ever  acts  as  conscience  cries, 

Shall  live,  though  dead." 

The  second  reason  why  we  do  not  do  all  we 
can  is  that  we  are  ashamed  to  try  for  fear 
people  will  laugh  at  us.  Next  to  a  lack  of 
faith  in  the  efficacy  of  what  we  can  do,  comes 
the  blighting  dread  of  exposing  our  weakness 
and  our  littleness  to  others.  Sad  as  it  may 
be,  it  is  yet  true  that  many  worthy  souls  shrink 
not  only  from  their  simplest,  plainest  duties, 
but  their  highest,  noblest  opportunities,  from 
the  mere  dread  of  being  laughed  at.  So  they 
indolently  hide  themselves  behind  the  screen 
of  what  they  "would  like"  to  do  and  be  rather 
than  royally  reveal  what  they  can  do  and  what 
they  are.  How  many  people  to-day  go  to 
churches  they  do  not  believe  in,  and  stand 
aloof  from  causes  their  intellect  approves,  be- 
cause of  the  ridicule  and  the  social  ostracism 
such  loyalty  would  bring  to  them !  I  doubt 
not  the  hands  of  a  dozen  women  in  Bethany 
ached  that  morning  to  do    the  very    thing  this 


58  FAITHFULNESS 

woman  did  do.  But  they  did  not  dare;  the 
disciples  or  somebody  else  would  laugh  at  them, 
and  they  were  right  about  it.  They  certainly 
would,   and  they  did. 

The  woman  knows  that  this  or  that  fashion 
is  ridiculous;  that  custom  meaningless,  or 
worse,  criminal;  but  others  do  it.  For  her  to 
refrain  would  be  to  make  herself  peculiar. 
She's  afraid  cf  being  laughed  at.  The  young 
man  knows  that  the  cigar  is  a  filthy  thing,  that 
the  intoxicating  glass  is  a  dangerous  enemy; 
yet  to  set  his  face  against  them  like  flint 
would  be  to  "make  himself  odd."  He  does  not 
dare  to  do  all  he  can  to  dispel  these  curses  by 
refusing  them  for  himself,  for  fear  cf  being 
laughed  at.  I  dare  not  push  these  inquiries 
into  the  more  internal  things  of  life,  lest  I 
might  be  unjust.  I  fear  that  the  spiritual,  in- 
tellectual and  social  servility  that  might  be 
discovered  is  something  appalling.  This  moral 
cowardice  is  a  practical  infidelity  more 
alarming  than  all  the  honest  atheism  and 
avowed  skepticism  of  this  or  any  other  age. 
Moral  courage  is  the  great  want  of  our  times, 
and  all  times.     Not    courage    to  do    the  great 


FAITHFULNESS  59 

things,  so  called,  but  to  do  the  greater  things 
which  we  call  "little."  There  is  always  hero- 
ism enough  to  snatch  women  and  children  from 
burning  buildings,  or  to  make  a  bayonet  charge 
on  the  battle-field,  whether  spiritual  or  mate- 
rial, but  always  too  little  courage  to  befriend 
the  forsaken;  to  do  picket  duty  for  advanced 
ideas,  to  stand  as  lonely  sentinels  in  the  van- 
guard of  progress.  More  heroic  is  the  smile 
that  robs  the  pain  of  its  groan  than  is  the 
defiant  hurrah  of  a  charging  column.  More 
daring  is  the  breaking  of  a  single  flask  of 
ointm.ent  by  a  shrinking,  trembling,  despised 
soul  in  behalf  of  what  seems  to  be  a  losing 
cause,  than  volumes  of  wordy  rhetoric  from 
arrogant  believers.  It  was  not  the  presump- 
tuous  Pharisee  who  emptied  his  fat  purse  into 
the  treasury  box,  but  the  poor  widow  who 
dared  to  come  after  him  and  dropped  in  her 
two  mites,  which  made  a  farthing,  that  stirred 
the  heart  of  Jesus ;  for  she  gave  out  of  a  quiv- 
ering life. 

"Two  mites,  two  drops,  but  all  her  house  and  land, 

Fell  from  an  earnest  heart  but  trembling  hand; 

The  others'  wanton  wealth  foamed  high  and  brave; 

The  others  cast  away,  she  only  gave.'*^ 


6o  FAITHFULNESS 

It  was  not  the  Chicago  Board  of  Trade  that 
out  of  growing  fortunes  equipped  a  battery, 
recruited  a  regiment, and  filled  the  coffers  of  the 
Sanitary  Commission,  and  then  drove  home  to 
sleep  on  sumptuous  couches  and  eat  from  groan- 
ing tables,  that  did  the  brave  thing  or  gave 
grandly  to  the  war,  but  the  mother  who  kissed 
her  only  son  on  the  door-step  and  through  her 
tears  said,  "Go,  my  child,  your  country  needs 
you,"  and  then  turned  around  to  find  all  the 
light  gone  out  of  her  humble  home.  It  is  not 
the  man  who  gives  fifty  thousand  dollars  to 
found  an  institution,  while  he  has  several  hun- 
dred thousand  more  to  misuse  in  selfish  ways, 
that  is  generous;  but  he  who  gives  the  half  of 
yesterday's  toil,  the  half  of  his  night's  sleep, 
foregoes  an  expected  pleasure,  or  does  the 
still  harder  thing,  stands  up  to  be  laughed  at; 
who  sides  with  truth — 

"Ere  her  cause  bring  fame  and  profit,  and 'tis  prosperous 
to  be  just," — 

that  is  true  to  the  standard  of  the  Bethany 
woman.  Giving  is  not  the  throwing  away  of 
that  which  we  never  miss,  but  it  is  the  conse- 
crating to  noble  uses  that  which  is    very  dear 


rAI'lHFULNESS  6l 

to  us,  that  which  has  cost  us  much;  it  is  the 
bravely  daring  to  be  faithful  over  the  few 
things  given  us.  Doing  this  is  what  makes 
transcendent  the  courage  of  the  Bethany  wom- 
an. Probably  she  was  one  of  the  three  women 
who,  a  few  days  after,  stood  by  the  cross,  en- 
dured the  wrong  they  could  not  cure, — 
"Undaunted  by  the  threatening  death, 
Or  harder  circumstance  of  living  doom." 

From  the  saddened  radiance  upon  their  faces 
streams  a  mellow  light  which  reveals  the  rot- 
tenness of  the  timbers  in  that  well-painted 
bridge  of  expediency,  popularity  and  pros- 
perity over  which  our  lives  would  fain  pass. 
Now,  as  then,  would-be  disciples  withdraw 
from  the  conflict  of  truth  with  wrong;  absent 
themselves  from  the  service  of  the  ideas  and 
the  rights  they  believe  in,  instead  of  standing 
on  the  Golgotha  grounds  where  rages  the  bat- 
tle of  life  against  forms,  freedom  against  sla- 
very, honesty  against  pretense,  candor  against 
equivocation,  intelligent  reason  against  con- 
ventional creed.  These  women  bore  testimony 
to  the  truth  in  the  grandest  way  it  is  possible 
for  human  souls  to  testify,  by  standing  with  it 


62  FAITHFULNESS 

when  there  is  no  crowd  to  lower  the  standard; 
by  voting  at  a  place  where  the  popular  stand- 
ards give  way  to  the  divine;  for  surely  when 
is  swept  the  chaff 

"  From  the  Lord's  threshing  floor, 
We  see  that  more  than  half 
The  victory  is  attained,  when  one  or  two, 
Through  the  fool's  laughter  and  the  traitor's  scorn. 
Beside  thy  sepulcher  can  abide  the  morn, 
Crucified  truth,  when  thou  shalt  rise  anew.  ' 

This  Bethany  loyalty,  friends,  is  the  simple 
requirement  of  religion.  Not  one  cent,  not 
one  moment,  not  one  loving  impulse,  not  one 
thought,  not  one  syllable  of  a  creed,  more  than 
comes  within  the  range  of  your  possibilities  is 
expected,  but  all  of  this  is  expected;  nothing 
less  will  do.  God  asks  for  no  more  and  man 
has  no  right  to  expect  it,  but  all  of  this  he 
does  expect  and  no  man  can  evade  it.  Bring 
your  flasks  of  precious  ointment,  break  them, 
anoint  with  them  that  which  is  worthy,  and 
there  will  escape  therefrom  a  fragrance  as  per- 
vasive, as  lasting,  as  that  which  filled  the  air 
of  Bethany  nineteen  hundred  years  ago;  for 
it  will  be  the  same  flask  of  consecration  broken 


FAITHFULNESS  63 

by  the  same  hand  of  courage,  the  same  oint- 
ment of  good  will,  the  same  spikenard  of  love, 
very  precious.  Let  duty  be  its  own  reward; 
love,  its  own  justification.  "She  hath  done  what 
she  could."  This  is  the  fullness  of  the  Chris- 
tian excellence;  it  is  the  ultimate  standard  of 
religion. 


"I  HAD  A  FRIEND*^ 

Our  Bible  is  a  book  of  lives.  It  is  a  book  of 
men  praying  rather  than  a  book  of  prayer,  of 
men  believing  rather  tlian  a  book  of  beliefs, 
of  men  sinning  and  repenting  and  righting 
themselves  rather  than  a  book  of  ethics.  It 
is  a  book,  too,  of  men  loving:  it  is  full  of 
faces  turned  toward  faces.  As  in  the  proces- 
sion-pictures frescoed  on  rich  old  walls,  the 
well-known  men  and  women  come  trooping 
through  its  pages  in  twos  and  threes,  or  in 
little  bands  of  which  we  recognize  the  central 
figure  and  take  the  others  to  be  those  unknown 
friends  immortalized  by  just  one  mention  in 
this  book.  Adam  always  strays  with  Eve  along 
the  foot-paths  of  our  fancy.  Ahram  walks  with 
Sarah,  Rebecca  at  the  well  suggests  the  Isaac 
waiting  somewhere,  and  Rachel's  presence 
pledges  Jacob's  not  far  off.  Two  brothers  and 
a  sister  together  led  Israel  out  from  Egypt. 
G4 


*'I   HAD   A   friend"  65 

Here  come  Ruth  and  Naomi,  and  there  go 
David  and  Jonathan.  Job  sits  in  his  ashes  for- 
lorn enough,  but  not  for  want  of  comforters, — 
we  can  hardly  see  Job  for  his  friends.  One 
whole  book  in  the  Old  Testament  is  a  love- 
song  about  an  eastern  king  and  one  of  his 
dusky  brides;  although,  to  keep  the  Bible  bib- 
lical, our  modern  chapter-headings  call  the 
Song  of  Solomon  a  prophecy  of  the  love  of  the 
Christian  Church  for  Christ.  Some  persons  have 
wished  the  book  away,  but  a  wise  man  said 
the  Bible  would  have  lacked,  had  it  not  held 
somewhere  in  its  pages  a  human  love-song. 
True,  the  Prophets  seem  to  wander  solitary, — 
pro])hets  usually  do  ;  yet,  though  we  seldom  see 
their  ancient  audience,  they  doubtless  had 
one.  Minstrels  and  preachers  always  presup- 
pose the  faces  of  a  congregation. 

But  as  we  step  from  Old  Testament  to  New, 
again  we  hear  the  buzz  of  little  companies. 
We  follow  Jesus  in  and  out  of  homes;  children 
cluster  about  his  feet;  women  love  him;  a 
dozen  men  leave  net  and  plough  to  bind  to  his 
their  fortunes,  and  others  go  forth  by  twos, 
not  ones,  to  imitate  him.       *' Friend    of    publi- 


66  *'I   HAD  A  friend" 

cans  and  sinners"  was  his  title  with  those  who 
loved  him  not.  Across  the  centuries  we  like 
and  trust  him  all  the  more  because  he  was  a 
man  of  many  friends.  No  spot  in  all  the  Bible 
is  quite  so  overcoming  as  that  garden-scene 
where  the  brave,  lonely  sufferer  comes  back, 
through  the  darkness  under  the  olive-trees,  to 
his  three  chosen  hearts,  within  a  stone's  throw 
of  his  heart-break, — to  find  them  fast  asleep! 
Once  before,  in  that  uplifted  hour  from  which 
far  off  he  descried  Gethsemane, — we  call  it  the 
"Transfiguration," — we  read  of  those  same  three 
friends  asleep.  The  human  lo?ieliness  of  that 
soul  in  the  garden  as  he  paused  by  Peter's 
side, — "You!  could  you  not  watch  with  me  one 
hour?" — and  turned  back  into  the  darkness, 
and  into  God!  Then  came  the  kiss  with  which 
another  of  his  twelve  betrayed  him.  No  pas- 
sage in  the  Gospels  makes  him  so  real  a  man 
to  us  as  this;  no  words  so  appeal  to  us  to  stand 
by  and  be  his  friends. 

Jesus  gone,  we  see  the  other  hero  of  the  New 
Testament  starting  off  on  missionary  jour- 
neys,— but  Barnabas  or  Mark  or  Silas  or  Timo- 
thy is  with  him.   The  glowing  postscripts  of  his 


**I   HAD  A  friend"  67 

letters  tell  how  manj^  hearts  loved  him.  What 
a  comrade  he  must  have  been, — the  man  who 
dictated  the  thirteenth  of  Corinthians!  What 
a  hand-grasp  in  his  favorite  phrases — ''fellow- 
laborers, "  "/^//^w-soldiers, "  "/^//^z£/-prisoners ! " 
We  wonder  who  the  men  and  women  were  he 
names, — "Luke  the  well-beloved  physician," 
and  "Zenas  the  lawyer,"  and  "Tryphena,  and 
Tryphosa, "  and  "Stachys,  my  beloved. "  Just 
hear  him  send  his  love  to  some  of  these  friends: 
it  is  the  end  of  what  in  solemn  phrase  we  call 
the  Epistle  to  the  Romans, — what  Paul  would 
perhaps  have  called  "the  letter  I  sent  the  dear 
souls  in  that  little  church  in  Rome": — 

"I  commend  unto  you  Phebe,  our  sister, that 
ye  assist  her  in  whatsoever  business  she  hath 
need  of  you"  (help  that  woman!)  "for  x/^^  hath 
been  a  succourer  of  many,  and  of  myself,  too. 
Greet  Priscilla  and  Aquila,  my  helpers  in 
Christ  Jesus,  who  have  for  my  life  laid  down 
their  own  necks.  Greet  Mary  who  bestowed 
much  labor  on  us.  Salute  Andronicus  and  Junia, 
my  kinsmen  and  my  fellow  prisoners.  ,  Greet 
Amplias,  my  beloved  in  the  Lord.  Salute  Ur- 
bane, our  helper  in  Christ,  and  Stachys,  my  be- 


68  **I  HAD  A  friend" 

loved.  Salute  Tryphena  and  Tryphosa,  who 
labor  in  the  Lord,  and  the  beloved  Persis, 
and  Rufus  chosen  in  the  Lord,  and  his  mother 
— and  mine.''     And  soon. 

"His  mother — his  and  mine:"  no  doubt  Paul 
had  a  dozen  dear  old  mothers  in  those  sea- 
board cities  where  he  came  and  went.  It 
brings  him  very  near  to  us  to  read  such  words. 
Why,  if  we  had  lived  then  and  had  been  "rad- 
ical" Jews  like  him,  and  like  him  had  dared 
2Lrv^  joyed  \.o  speak  our  faith,  and  for  it  had 
been  brave  enough  to  stand  by  his  side  in  la- 
bors and  in  prisons,  our  names  might  have 
slipped  into  those  letters,  and  we  have  been 
among  the  dozen  or  twenty  picked  out  from 
all  the  Marys  and  Lukes  and  Pauls  of  the 
Roman  Empire  to  be  enshrined  in  a  Bible 
postscript,  and  guessed  about  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  afterward, — because  Paul  had  once 
sent  his  love  to  us  in  a  letter!  I  would  far 
rather  spare  some  of  the  words  in  which  he 
tells  us  his  thought  of  the  Christ  and  the 
Church  than  those  names  that  huddle  at  his 
letter-ends.  They  make  the  Epistles  real  let- 
ters, such  as  we  mailed  yesterday.   They  bring 


*'I   HAD   A   friend"  69 

Paul  down  out  of  his  Bible  niche,  and  forward 
out  of  the  magnificent  distance  of  a  Bible 
character,  and  make  him  just  "Paul,"  alive 
and  lovable;  a  man  to  whom  our  hearts  warm 
still,  because  his  own  heart  was  so  warm  that 
men  fell  on  his  neck  and  kissed  him  when  he 
told  them  they  should  see  his  face  no  more. 

So  much  for  the  friendships  of  the  Bible. 
Now  for  our  own,   as  sacred. 

It  is  happiness  to  have  some  one  "glad  you 
are  alive."  No  wonder  that  poor  girls  take 
their  lives  when  they  come  to  feel  that  not  one 
face  lights  up  because  they  are  in  the  world, 
or  would  be  shadowed  if  they  left  it.  We  who 
have  the  friends  know  how  much  of  all  earth's 
worth  to  us  lies  in  certain  eyes  and  faces,  cer- 
tain voices,  certain  hands.  Fifty  persons,  or 
perhaps  but  five,  make  the  wide  world  popu- 
lous for  us,  and  living  in  it  beautiful.  The 
spring-times  and  the  sun-sets,  and  all  things 
grand  and  sweet  besides,  are  at  their  grandest 
and  their  sweetest  when  serving  as  locality  and 
circumstance  to  love.  The  hours  of  our  day 
are  really  timed  by  sounds  of   coming  feet:  if 


70  **I  HAD  A   friend" 

you  doubt  it,  wait  till  the  feet  have  ceased  to 
sound  along  the  street  and  up  the  stair.  Our 
week's  real  Sabbath  is  the  day  which  brings 
the  weekly  letter.  The  year's  real  June  and 
Christmas  come  at  the  rare  meeting-times;  and 
the  true  "Year  of  the  Lord"  was  the  time  when 
certain  twos  first  met.  Let  the  few  hands 
vanish,  the  few  voices  grow  still,  and  the 
emptied  planet  seems  a  whirling  graveyard; 
for  it  no  longer  holds  the  few  who  wanted  us 
and  whom  we  wanted.  "Who  wanted  us," — 
that  is  the  word  to  start  with:  the  deepest  of 
all  human  longings  is  simply  to  be  wanted. 
So  Mother  Nature  has  seen  to  it  for  the 
most  of  us  that,  at  least  upon  arrival  here,  we 
shall  be  wanted.  She  sends  the  wee  ones  into 
the  world  so  wondrously  attractive  that  we  get 
more  worship  then  than  ever  afterwards,  when 
it  might  do  us  harm.  We  are  prayed  for  be- 
fore we  come,  we  are  thanked  for  with  the 
family's  thanksgiving  at  our  advent,  a  mother's 
sense  of  motherhood  and  a  father's  sense  of 
fatherhood  have  been  begotten  to  prepare  self- 
sacrifices  for  us:  all  this  by  way  of  welcome. 
In  one  word,  we   are    "wanted"   in    the  world 


'I   HAD   A   FRIEND' 


71 


when  we  reach  it.  "No  entrance  here  except 
on  business,"  true;  but  the  babies  /lave  the 
business, — who  so  much?  Very  pitiful  are  the 
young  lives  for  whom  these  pre-arrangements 
of  love  fail. 

But  soon  our  helplessness  is  past,  and  what 
ought  to  be  the  period  of  our  helpfulness  has 
come;  and  then  is  there  anything  that  we  can 
do  to  make  that  title,  "Wanted,"  sure?  Is 
there  any  recipe  for  winning  friends?  In  old 
Rome  young  men  and  maidens  used  to  drink 
love-potions  and  wear  charms  to  eke  out  their 
winsomeness:  in  this  modern  time  is  there  any 
potion,  any  charm,  for  friend-making?  The 
question  is  worth  asking,  for  it  is  no  low  am- 
bition to  wish  to  be  desired  in  the  world,  no 
low  endeavor  to  deliberately  try  to  be  love- 
worthy. Wise  father  he — "the  Lord's  chore- 
boy"  one  called  him, — the  sunny-faced  old 
Abolitionist,  who  brought  his  children  up  to 
know  that  "the  one  thing  worth  living  for  is 
to  love  and  to  be  loved."  But  as  to  recipes 
for  lovableness,  the  young  soul  in  its  romance 
laughs  to  scorn  so  kitchen-like  a  question. 
And  right  to  laugh  the  young  soul  is;  for  much 


72  *'I   HAD   A   friend" 

in  the  business  passeth  recipe.  We  speak  of 
"choosing"  friends,  of  "making  friends,"  of 
"keeping"  or  of  "giving  up"  friends,  and  if 
such  terms  were  wholly  true,  the  old  advice 
were  good, — In  friend-making  first  consult  the 
gods!  Jesus,  it  is  said,  prayed  all  the  night 
before  he  chose  his  twelve.  But  the  words  are 
not  all  true;  friendship  is  at  most  but  half- 
"made, " — the  other  half  is  born.  What  we  can 
chiefly  "choose"  and  "make"  is,  not  the  friend, 
but  opportunity  for  contact.  When  the  con- 
tact happens f  something  higher  than  our  will 
chooses  for  us.  Fore-ordination  then  comes  in. 
"Matches  are  made  in  heaven,"  and  before  the 
foundation  of  the  world  our  friendships  are 
arranged.  "Thine  they  were  and  thou  gavest 
them  me,"  we  feel  of  those  whom  we  love 
best; — borrowing  words  which,  it  is  said  again, 
Jesus  used  of  his  disciple-friends.  Nothing 
supernatural  in  this;  but  it  is  so  supremely  nat- 
ural, the  secret  of  it  roots  so  deep  in  the  heart 
of  Nature,  that  it  passeth  understanding.  We 
can  not  cross  the  laws  of  attraction  and  repul- 
sion ;  can  only  attract  and  be  attracted,  repel 
and    be   repelled,      according    to     those   laws. 


*<I   HAD   A   friend"  73 

There  is  in  Nature  a  great  deal  of  that  phe- 
nomenon called  "love-at-sight. "  Whoever  wrote 
it  truly  wrote, — 

"Thou  shalt  know  him,  when  he  comes, 
Not  by  any  din  of  drums, 
Nor  the  vantage  of  his  airs; 
Neither  by  his  crown, 
Nor  his  gown, 
Nor  by  anything  he  wears: 
He  shall  only  well-known  be 
By  the  holy  harmony 
That  his  coming  makes  in  thee!" 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  in  Nature 
that  opposite  experience  of  which  Dr.  Fell  is 
the  typical  victim  : — 

"I  do  not  love  thee,  Dr.  Fell: 
The  reason  why  I  can  not  tell. 
But  this  alone  I  know  full  well, — 
I  do  not  love  thee,  Dr.  Fell." 

How  often  we  have  seen  the  poor  doctor! 
How  often  we  have  bee^i  the  poor  doctor!  And 
though  we  smile,  we  ache  for  him.  It  is  trag- 
edy,— this  one-sidedness  of  friendship,  these 
unequal  gravitations  of  love.  But  what  makes 
gravitation?  The  men  of  science  can  not  tell 
us.      "Fascination"  is  soul-prravitation.      "Per- 


74  **I   HAD  A   friend" 

sonal  magnetism"  we  sometimes  call  it,  using 
another  word  to  hide  our  ignorance,  and  mean- 
ing the  sum  of  all  the  mysterious  centripetal 
forces  that  lodge  in  us  and  all  radiations  of 
health  and  beauty  that  go  out  from  us.  It  lies 
in  the  glancing  of  the  eye,  in  the  flitting  of  the 
smile,  in  the  toning  of  the  voice,  in  the  poise 
of  the  figure,  in  the  grace  of  the  motion.  Nearly 
all  have  more  or  less  of  it ;  but  some  how  en- 
viably the  more,  and  others  how  lamentably  the 
less!  Some  persons  make  more  friends  as 
they  come  into  the  room,  or  as  they  walk  down 
the  street,  or  as  they  smile  their  greeting, 
than  others  of  us  can  hope  to  make  with  long 
and  solid  service. 

But  grant  all  this, — still  our  young  lover  is 
but  half-x'ight  in  laughing  at  a  recipe  for  love. 
We  know  no  cause  of  gravitation,  but  we  can 
study  its  laws  and  apply  it  in  a  thousand 
forms  of  civilizing  work:  and  whatever  can  be 
studied  in  its  laws  is  subject  for  a  science, 
wherever  laws  can  be  applied  is  subject  for  an 
art.  So  is  it  with  soul-gravitation.  There  is, 
then,  both  a  science  and  an  art  of  Friendship. 
Besides  that  mystic  element    in  it  so    hard  to 


*<I   HAD   A    friend"  ^^ 

be  accounted  for,  so  hard  to  be  acquired,  there 
is  a  moral  element  in  it  which  is  an  open  se- 
cret, and  this  can  be  acquired.  Indeed,  so  far 
as  it  is  true  that  "beauty  is  the  flowering  of 
virtue,"  that  mystic  element  is  moral,  too. 
Hidden  in  the  "virtue"  of  the  ancestors  may 
lie  the  source  of  all  the  alien  grace,  sometimes 
so  visibly  divorced  from  virtue  in  the  children; 
and,  given  time  enough — say,  generations,  cen- 
turies— perhaps  there  is  no  limit  to  the  out- 
ward fascination  which  may  be  earned  and  won. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  so  sure  and  large  is  this 
moral  element  in  love  that  by  it  one  can  go 
far  to  "make"  friends,  after  all.  If  we  choose 
to  be,  we  can  be  "wanted"  in  this  world.  In 
a  deep  and  worthy  sense  old  Ovid,  he  who 
wrote  the  poem  on  the  "Art  of  Loving,"  might 
be  imitated.  And  when  you  write  your  poem 
on  that  subject,  you  will  without  fail  put  into 
it  one  hint, — that  friendships  based  on  the 
mystic  surface-fascinations  are  the  kind  so 
apt  to  end  in  tragedies  of  waning  and  of  bro- 
ken love;  whereas  the  attractiveness  which  can 
be  acquired  makes  basis  for  the  friendships 
apt  to  solidly  endure. 


76  '4    HAD   A   friend" 

We  must  stop  right  here  a  moment;  for 
different  persons  mean  such  different  things 
by  "Friendship. "  The  one  who  uses  the  sacred 
word  most  easily  is  the  one  least  likely  to  know 
much  about  the  sacred  thing.  Some  people 
know  every  one  they  speak  of  so  very  well  in- 
deed! "Oh  yes,  an  intimate  friend  of  mine," 
they  say,  when  you  ask  if  they  have  ever  met 
A  or  B.  They  Jiave  "met"  him.  One  may  well 
hesitate  to  answer  Yes  even  to  the  common 
question,  "Do  you  know  such  or  such  a  per- 
son?" Know  him?  I  have  seen  him  six  times, 
I  traveled  with  him  half  a  day,  once  I  had 
a  long  argument  with  him,  he  told  me  stories 
of  his  childhood,  and  we  discovered  that  four 
generations  back  we  would  have  been  first 
cousins, — but  do  I  know  him?  No.  I  have 
an  opinion  whether  I  like  him  or  not,  whether 
he  has  common  sense  or  not,  perhaps  whether 
I  would  trust  him  or  not;  but  I  do  not  know 
that  man."  Much  more  is  it  in  place  to  be 
modest  about  claiming  him  as  a  friend. 

Even  speaking  carefully,  every  one  has  at 
least  two  meanings  for  our  sacred  word.  Each 
of  us  is  ringed  about  by  two  circles,  both  com- 


**I   HAD  A   friend"  77 

monly  called  "friends."  The  outer  circle  is 
the  circle  of  our  Likers,  the  inner  is  the  circle 
of  our  Lovers.  The  main  secret  of  having 
Likers  lies  in  justice  carried  to  the  point  of 
kindliness  and  courtesy.  Justice  carried  to  the 
point  of  kindliness  and  courtesy  commands 
the  good  word  when  people  talk  of  us  behind 
our  back;  it  commands  the  hearty  greeting 
when  we  ring  the  bell;  it  commands  the  true 
"I'm  glad  to  see  you"  in  the  eyes  as  well  as 
voice;  it  commands  the  excuse  in  our  behalf 
when  some  one  dwells  upon  our  faults  with 
over-emphasis,  and  with  defence  when  people 
misinterpret  or  misrepresent  us.  Now  justice 
carried  to  the  point  of  courtesy  and  kindliness 
is  acquirable.  The  recipe  for  making  Likers 
calls  for  no  rare  material:  all  I  need  lies  right 
before  me  and  around  me  in  the  opportunities 
of  doing  truthful,  just,  kind  things  by  those 
I  deal  with.  The  recipe  calls  for  no  rare  ele- 
ment, and  the  mixing  and  the  making  take  no 
one  day  in  the  week.  There  is  baking-day, 
sweeping-day,  washing-day,  but  no  friend-mak- 
ing-day. It  is  Monday's,  Tuesday's,  Wednes- 
day's work,  and    lasts   through    Saturday    and 


78  *'l   HAD   A   friend" 

Sunday  and  the  twenty-ninth  of  February. 
As  one  does  his  business  he  makes  his  Liker. 
There  is  no  place  nor  time  nor  way  of  making 
him  save  as  we  go  the  rounds  of  common  liv- 
ing; for  by  the  common  deeds  of  the  common 
life  we  all  test  likings.  What  is  more,  the  rec- 
ipe never  wholly  fails.  Try  it  faithfully  and 
it  is  sure  to  bring  us  Likers.  It  is  worth  re- 
peating to  ourselves  and  emphasizing, — If  we 
really  wish  to  be,  we  can  be  "wanted"  in  the 
world;  and  the  ambition  to  be  wanted  here 
is  a  worthy  one;  and  the  effort  to  be  wanted 
nurtures  in  us  that  quick  courtesy  and  instinc- 
tive kindliness  that  flower  out  from  an  unfail- 
ing justice. 

But  now  to  turn  from  our  Likers  to  our 
Lovers.  The  conditions  here  are  harder,  and 
therefore  the  culture  gained  in  meeting  the 
conditions  is  proportionately  higher.  Come 
with  me  to  that  inner  circle  that  only  holds 
the  lives  knit  up  with  ours  by  a  thousand  cross- 
ing ties,  and  where  we  say  with  a  yearning  and 
exultation  so  different  from  anything  felt  in 
outer    meanings    of    the    word,    "My  friendsT 


*'I   HAD  A  FRIEND"  79 

And  some  of  us  are  thinking  of  an  inmost  cen- 
ter where  we  never  use  the  plural;  are  think- 
ing that  the  truest  friendship  casts  out  all  but 
two  together  and,  for  the  time  at  least,  crowns 
him  or  her  alone  the  friend.  We  feel  as  if  we 
had  achieved  our  life's  success  in  that  one 
winning,  and  say  with  Robert  Browning, — 

"  I  am  named  and  known  by  that  hour's  feat, 
There  took  my  station  and  degree: 
So  grew  my  own  small  life  complete 
As  Nature  obtained  her  best  of  me, — 
One  born  to  \owq  yon!  " 

Be  it  so:  but  even  then  it  is  true  to  say  that 
the  secret  is  largely  a  moral  secret.  Nay,  inore 
true  of  such  love  than  of  any  other  to  say  that 
it  is  goodness  which  attracts.  Luckily  for  some 
of  us,  one  may  love  a  poor  kind  of  fellow;  but 
they  love  us  not  in  virtue  of  our  poorness, — 
it  is  in  spite  of  it.  They  love  us  for  some 
real  or  fancied  excellence,  some  evidence  of 
truthfulness  and  rightfulness  they  think  that 
they  discern  in  us. 

And  with  that  word  we  reach  a  high 
thought  worth  a  climb,  this  namely,  that  to 
have   a   true   friend  one  must  love  Truth  and 


8o  "I   HAD  A   friend" 

Right  better  than  he  loves  that  friend. 
To  win  a  true  friend,  you  and  I  must  love 
Truth  and  Right  better  than  that  friend, 
however  dear.  This  involves  another  of  love's 
tragedies;  for,  by  this  rule,  wherever  there  is 
noble  friendship  there  is  always  possibility  of 
its  waning;  although  at  the  time  to  believe  that 
waning  possible  is  impossible.  But  the  rela- 
tion to  be  vital  must  be  fresh  each  day.  If  there 
were  not  a  new  demand  made  by  me  on  my 
friend  and  made  upon  me  by  my  friend  each 
time  we  met,  a  new  demand  to  be  then  and 
there  worth  loving,  half  the  charm  would  be 
gone.  It  is  the  heart  mine,  yet  mine  only  by 
fresh  necessity  of  winning  it  by  nobleness, — it 
is  my  heart  his,  yet  his  by  an  ever  fresh 
necessity  of  giving  it  to  him  for  his  worth's 
sake, — that  makes  the  dearness  so  ineffable.  In 
order  then  to  be  "friends"  in  this  high  sense, 
we  must  be  ever  ready  to  be  renounced  if  we 
persist  in  a  deliberate  No  before  a  duty,  must 
be  ever  ready  to  renounce  if  he  persists  in 
such  a  No.  It  is  not  that  the  two  must  take 
the  same  idea  of  duty,  nor  that,  when  one  fails 
to  do  his  dut}^,  he   falls    from  all    regard;  but 


''I   HAD    A   friend"  Si 

that,  when  he  so  fails,  he  falls  as  if  by  fate  out 
of  that  chosen  place  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking.  The  man  is  here,  and,  as  we  use 
the  words,  a  good  man  still;  as  we  use  words, 
is  still  "our  friend;"  perhaps  he  even  falls 
into  a  tenderer  place  than  ever;  but  it  is  the 
tenderness  of  pity  now,  no  more  a  tenderness 
of  reverence.  The  short  and  simple  fact 
is,  that  ou?'  man,  ^z^r  woman,  has  vanished:  we 
have  lost  that  ideal  made  real  which  we 
had  been  calling  "friend."  We  cannot,  if  we 
would,  feel  to  him  as  we  did  before.  No  heart- 
labor  can  put  him  where  he  was  before.  For 
Truth  and  Right  had  placed  him  there,  not 
we, — they  only  can  replace  him.  Those  moral 
nature-forces  behind  good-will,  that  generate 
attraction,  must  be  again  invoked;  and  a  man 
can  only  make  the  old  attraction  his  again  by 
reclaiming  the  old  honor  to  his  soul. 

"We needs  must  love  the  highest  when  we  see  it, — 
Not  Launcelot,  nor  another," 

though  Launcelot  be  the  name  of  husband  or 
of  brother! 

Does  it  seem  strange  to  say  that  in  this  very 
possibility  of  tragedy  lies  the  ennobling  power 


82  ''I  HAD  A  friend" 

of  love?  From  the  sureness  of  losing  it  if  un- 
deserved, comes  compulsion  to  deserve  it. 
We  feel  that  our  friendship  with  John  or  with 
Ellen  is  our  highest  title  of  honor,  our  patent 
of  nobility,  and  sit  ever  in  a  sense  of  glad  amaze 
that  we  can  call  such  superiority,  "my  friend." 
There  can  be  no  consciously  hidden  weakness 
in  us  and  we  be  safe  in  their  affection.  Perfect 
love  casteth  out  fear,  but  only  by  having  re- 
vealed everything  that  maketh  fear.  To  dis- 
cover, after  a  year's  close  friendship,  a  con- 
cealed meanness  in  me,  would,  as  meanness, 
degrade  me  in  your  eyes,  but  as  concealed 
from  you  it  would  be  treachery.  So  we  dare 
not  come  to  the  point  when  the  one  we  love 
shall  think  of  us,  "He  is  a  lower  kind  of  man, '' 
or  "She  is  a  lower  kind  of  woman,  than  I  im- 
agined." If  liked  as  much  after  that  discovery 
as  before,  for  such  loyalty  to  us  rather  than  to 
Right  our  love  for  them  would  actually  grow 
less.  The  surprises  of  friendship — and  how 
exquisite  they  are! — ought  only  to  be  of  un- 
suspected excellences.  But  what  woe,  when 
one  whom  we  have  wholly  trusted  reels!  If 
this  embodiment  of  honor,  truth  and  kindness 


*'I   HAD  A   friend"  83 

reels  and  falls  before  our  eyes,  we  have  lost 
more  than  friend:  for  that  moment  we  have 
lost  our  vision  of  God!  Goodness  seems  emp- 
tiness, and  the  very  planet  jars!  We  can  un- 
derstand the  story  told  of  Pascal,  that  once, 
when  Arnauld  seemed  to  prefer  peace  to  truth, 
the  shock  to  Pascal  was  so  great  that  he  fainted 
away. 

Hence  there  must  needs  be  undimmed  sin- 
cerity, and  humility  even  to  confession,  in 
every  exalting  love.    Almost  we  have  to  say — 

"Have  I  a  lover 

Who  is  noble  and  free, 
I  would  he  were  nobler 
Than  to  love  me!'* 

And  we  know  so  well  the  truth  of  Emerson's 
other  word,  that  "in  the  last  analysis  love  is 
only  the  reflection  of  a  man's  own  worthiness 
from  other  men," — know  that  so  well  that,  in  a 
half-fear  lest  we  should  gain  under  false  pre- 
tenses the  love  we  crave,  we  are  impelled  to 
exaggerate  our  poorness.  "Love  me,  love  my 
dog,"  says  the  proverb:  "Love  me,  love  the 
dog  in  me!"  says  friendship.  Love  me  as  I 
am,  poor  as  I  am,  know  me  and  yet   love  me! 


84  *'I    HAD   A   friend" 

Among  all  ennobling  forces, therefore, hardly 
any  other  can  be  named  so  strong  as  an  in- 
most Friendship.  As  the  special  culture  which 
the  winning  of  our  Likers  gives  is  that  of 
quick,  wide  kindliness, the  special  culture  which 
the  winning  of  our  Lovers  gives  is  that  of 
purity,  sincerity,  humility,  selflessness,  and  the 
high  standard  for  all  honorable  qualities.  That 
says  it, — the  high  standard  for  all  honorable 
qualities :  to  win  and  hold  a  friend  we  are 
compelled  to  keep  ourselves  at  his  ideal  point, 
and  in  turn  our  love  makes  on  him  the  same 
appeal.  Each  insists  on  his  right  in  the  other 
to  an  ideal.  All  around  the  circle  of  our  best 
beloved  it  is  this  idealizing  that  gives  to  love 
its  beauty  and  its  pain  and  its  mighty  leverage 
on  character.  Its  beauty,  because  that  ideal- 
izing is  the  secret  of  love's  glow.  Its  pain, 
because  that  idealizing  makes  the  constant 
peril  of  love's  vanishing.  Its  leverage  to  up- 
lift character,  because  this  same  idealizing  is 
a  constant  challenge  between  every  two,  com- 
pelling each  to  be  his  best.  "What  is  the  se- 
cret of  your  life?"  asked  Mrs.  Browning  of 
Charles  Kingsley;  "tell   me,  that  I  may  make 


<*I   HAD   A   friend"  85 

mine  beautiful  too."  He  replied,  "J  had  a 
frie?id.''  The  reverence  this  implies  borders 
closely  upon  worship  and  the  ennoblement  that 
comes  of  that.  What  the  dying  Bunsen  said  as  he 
looked  up  in  the  eyes  of  his  wife  bending  over 
him,  "In  thy  face  have  I  seen  the  Eternal!"  is 
the  thought  of  many  a  heart  before  its  best 
beloved.  That  beloved  is  our  "beautiful  en- 
emy," in  Emerson's  phrase;  our  "dear  dread," 
as  some  older  writer  called  him;  our  outside 
conscience,  a  kind  of  Jesus-presence  before 
which  we  fear  to  do  a  wrong.  What  rare  power 
to  awake  power  in  her  friends  and  to  set  them 
as  it  were  in  an  invisible  church,  this  sentence 
attests  in  Margaret  Fuller:  "I  have  no  doubt 
that  she  saw  expressions,  heard  tones,  and  re- 
ceived thoughts  from  her  companions,  which  no 
one  else  ever  saw  or  heard  from  the  same  per- 
sons." Somewhere  in  her  "Middlemarch"George 
Eliot  puts  it  well:  "There  are  natures  in  which, 
if  they  love  us,  we  are  conscious  of  having  a 
sort  of  baptism  and  consecration;  they  bind 
us  over  to  rectitude  and  purity  by  their  pure 
belief  about  us;  and  our  sins  become  the  worst 
kind  of  sacrilege,  which  tears  down  the  invis- 
ible altar  of  trust." 


86  "I    HAD   A    friend" 

With  Friendship  meaning  so  much,  capable 
of  doing  so  much,  do  we  lower  or  rather  dig- 
nif}'  the  relation  of  father  and  mother  to  the 
child,  of  sister  to  brother,  of  husband  to  wife, 
when  we  say,  "Thos:;  two  are  each  other's  best 
friend"?  In  between  the  common  likings  of 
society  and  the  heart's-one-choice  comes  that 
whole  choir  of  family  affections.  The  father 
keeps  the  boy  his  son  by  making  him,  when 
young,  his  friend.  As  the  years  run  by,  the 
sister  keeps  the  brother,  the  brother  keeps  the 
sister,  in  love,  less  by  the  blood-tie  than  by 
the  words  and  works  and  trusts  of  friendship. 
And  in  the  marriage  itself  the  early  love  must 
7'ipe}i  into  close,  abiding,  inmost  friendship. 
The  happiest  marriages  take  place  gradually, 
and  go  on  deepening  all  through  the  life  to- 
gether. Hardly  are  they  begun  when  the 
presents  and  congratulations  coma,  and  the 
minister  says,  "Until  death  do  you  two  part." 

And  for  the  many  who  can  never  love  the 
one,  or  who,  loving,  are  not  loved  as  the  one; 
who 

"May  not  make  this  world  a  Paradise 
By  walking  it  together  hand  in  hand, 
With  eyes  that,  meeting,  find  a  double  strength," — 


*'I   HAD   A   friend'*  87 

for  them  the  great  solace,  the  great  elevation, 
is  to  love  lovableness,  love  it  in  all, — be  it 
to  all.  This  is  really  the  end  of  all  the  single 
and  personal  affections;  this  is  the  end  even 
of  wedded  love.  You  may  have  skipped  that 
stage,  you  may  have  lost  that  usual  path,  but 
still  may  find  the  hill-top  for  which  that  path 
is. 

A  friend  has  many  functions.  He  comes  as 
the  Brightener  into  our  life,  to  double  joys  and 
halve  our  griefs.  He  comes  as  the  Counsellor, 
to  give  wisdom  to  our  plans.  He  comes  as 
the  Strengthener,  to  multiply  our  opportunities 
and  be  hands  and  feet  for  us  in  our  absence. 
But,  above  all  use  like  this,  he  comes  as  our 
Rebuker,  to  explain  our  failures  and  shame  us 
from  our  lowness;  as  our  Purifier,  our  Up- 
lifter,  our  Ideal,  whose  life  to  us  is  a  constant 
challenge  in  our  heart,  "Friend,  come  up  high- 
er,—higher  along  with  me,  that  you  and  I  may 
be  those  true  lovers  who  are  nearest  to  God 
when  nearest  to  each  other!" 

But  when  such  a  friend  as  this, — it  may  be 
the  one  called  Father,  Husband,  Brother,  or 
Mother,  Sister,  Wife,  or  simply,  Friend— when 


88  *'I    HAD   A   FRIKND" 

such  a  friend  as  this  does,  as  we  say,  go  nearer 
to  God,  becoming  invisible  to  us,  it  is  won- 
derful to  feel  Death  growing  beautiful,  the 
unseen  world  becoming  real,  and  God's  good- 
ness seeming  good  as  never  before.  It  is  that 
vanished  one  who  changes  all  things  so  for  us, 
by  adding  his  goodness  to  the  unseen  side  of  things. 
Noble  friends — only  the  noble,  probably  — 
have  power  to  leave  us  this  bequest;  power 
to  bequeath  us  a  sense  of  God  more  real  and 
good,  a  sense  of  Deathlessness  more  sure. 
Therefore  we  can  never  know  the  whole  of  a 
friend's  blessing  until  he  has  died.  We  speak 
of  circles  "broken"  by  death,  but  a  circle  is 
really  incomplete  until. some  of  the  friends  sit 
lin  it  out  of  sight. 


TENDERNESS 

"The  bruised  reed  shall  he  not   break." — Isaiah  xlii:  3. 

Some  years  ago  I  clipped  the  following  from 
a  Chicago  daily  paper: 

A  Cincinnati  paper  says:  "In  a  pottery  factory  here 
there  is  a  workman  who  had  one  small  invalid  child  at 
home.  He  wrought  at, his  trade  with  exemplary  fidelity, 
being  always  in  the  shop  with  the  opening  of  the  day.  He 
managed,  however,  to  bear  each  evening  to  the  bedside  of 
his  "wee  lad,"  as  he  called  him,  a  flower,  a  bit  of  ribbon, 
or  a  fragment  of  crimson  glass — indeed,  anything  that 
would  lie  out  on  the  white  counter-pane  and  give  color  to 
the  room.  He  was  a  quiet,  unsentimental  man,  but  never 
went  home  at  night  without  something  that  would  make  the 
wan  face  light  up  with  joy  at  his  return.  He  never  said  to 
a  living  soul  that  he  loved  that  boy  so  much.  Still  he  went 
on  patiently  loving  him,  and  by  and  by  he  moved  that  whole 
shop  into  positively  real  but  unconscious  fellowship  with 
him.  The  workmen  made  curious  little  jars  and  cups  upon 
their  wheels,  and  painted  diminutive  pictures  down  their 
sides  before  they  stuck  them  in  the  corners  of  the  kiln  at 
burning  time.  One  brought  some  fruit  in  the  bulge  of  his 
89 


go  TENDERNESS 

apron,  and  another  engravings  in  a  rude  scrap-book.  Not 
one  of  them  whispered  a  word,  for  this  solemn  thing  was 
not  to  be  talked  about.  They  put  them  in  the  old  man's 
hat,  where  he  found  them;  he  understood  all  about  it,  and, 
believe  it  or  not,  cynics,  as  you  will,  but  it  is  a  fact  that 
the  entire  pottery,  full  of  men  of  rather  coarse  fiber  by 
nature,  grew  quiet  as  the  months  drifted,  becoming  gentle 
and  kind,  and  some  dropped  swearing  as  the  weary  look  on 
the  patient  fellow-worker's  face  told  them  beyond  mistake 
that  the  inevitable  shadow  was  drawing  nearer.  Every  day 
now  some  one  did  a  piece  of  work  for  him  and  put  it  on  the 
sanded  plank  to  dry,  so  that  he  could  come  later  and  go 
earlier.  So,  when  the  bell  tolled  and  the  little  coffin  came 
out  of  the  lonely  door,  right  around  the  corner,  out  of  sight, 
there  stood  a  hundred  stalwart  workingmen  from  the  pottery 
with  their  clean  clothes  on,  most  of  whom  gave  a  half  day's 
time  for  the  privilege  of  taking  part  in  the  simple  procession 
and  following  to  the  grave  that  small  burden  of  a  child  which 
probably  not  one  had  ever  seen." 

I  sent  the  clipping  to  my  friend  and  fellow- 
laborer  in  Cincinnati,  saying  that  I  had  great 
appetite  for  such  things,  and  that  I  was  always 
ready  to  believe  in  their  possibility,  but  I  did 
not  care  to  center  my  interests  upon  fictitious 
incidents  while  there  were  so  many  real  things 
upon  which  to  place  them.  I  asked  him  if  there 
was  any  way  by  which  he  could  verify  the 
essential  truthfulness  of  the  story.  In  due 
time  I  received  this  reply: — 


TENDERNESS  QI 

Dear  Jones: — You  sent  me  the  enclosed  slip  a  month  ago, 
asking  me  to  trace  its  authority,  but  it  was  not  till  yesterday 
that  I  found  any  convenient  way  of  inquiring  about  it.  Then 
by  chance  I  met  a  reporter  named  Thompson,  who  said  he 
wrote  it,  and  that  it  may  be  depended  upon. 

Yours  Truly, 

Geo.  a.  Thayer. 

With  this  assurance  I  venture  to  use  it  as  a 
help  in  this  study  of  Tenderness. 

Note  first  the  strength  that  lies  behind  this 
story,  the  power  of  that  feeling  that  avoided 
the  debilitating  compliment,  suppressed  the 
harrowing  word,  but  accomplished  the  kindly 
deed.  There  is  that  which  passes  for  tender- 
ness that  might  better  be  called  "softness." 
The  tremor  of  nerve  and  fluttering  of  heart, 
the  trembling  in  the  presence  of  suffering  and 
turning  pale  at  the  sight  of  pain,  is  very  com- 
mon, quite  real,  perhaps  commendable;  but 
lacking  strength  it  falls  short  of  the  grace  of 
tenderness;  it  is  wanting  in  moral  quality. 
There  is  that  which  sometimes  passes  for 
tenderness  that  is  more  physical  than  spiritual, 
more  selfish  than  disinterested.  It  springs 
from  untrained  nerves,  it  indicates  an  undis- 
ciplined soul,  one  untried  by  severity,   untem- 


92  TENDERNESS 

pered  by  sorrow.  Tears  in  the  presence  of 
suffering  do  not  necessarily  reflect  that  ten- 
derness described  in  my  text  and  context,  that 
to  which  Jesus  aspired. 

"He  shall  not  cry  aloud,  nor  lift  up  his  voice, 
Nor  cause  it  to  be  heard  in  the  street. 
The  bruised  reed  shall  he  not  break, 
And  the  glimmeriDg  flax  shall  he  not  quench; 
He  shall  send  forth  law  according  to  truth. 
He  shall  not  fail  nor  become  weary 
Until  he  shall  have  established  justice  in  the  earth, 
And  distant  nations  shall  wait  for  his  law." 

To  shrink  from  another's  suffering  because 
it  makes  us  suffer  too  is  only  a  refined  kind  of 
selfishness.  One  may  "not  have  heart  enough 
to  kill  a  chicken,"  as  we  say,  and  still  be  very 
cruel  if  this  inability  springs  from  weakness 
rather  than  tenderness.  True  tenderness  is 
that  which  can  destroy  limb  in  order  to  save 
life ;  when  necessary,  it  can  increase  the  tor- 
ture to  reduce  danger.  The  truly  tender  soul 
will  gladly  endure  itself  the  agony  it  would 
not  inflict  upon  another. 

"I  could  not  bear  to  see  him  suffer,  and  so  I 
came  away." 


TENDERNESS  93 

"I  would  like  to  help  him,  but  I  cannot 
stand  the  sight  of  so  much  wretchedness!" 

"Some  people  seem  to  be  able  to  wash  dirty 
children,  to  teach  ignorant  ones,  to  enjoy  their 
attempt  to  enlighten  the  stupid,  to  refine  the 
coarse,  to  ennoble  the  wicked, — but  I  cannot 
do  these  things;  they  work  on  my  feelings  so. 
They  make  me  so  miserable." 

These  are  familiar  sayings  and  they  reveal 
miserable  weaknesses.  Such  confessions  ought 
never  to  be  made  except  in  humility.  Such 
lives  need  to  be  lifted  out  of  cowardice  into 
courage,  regenerated  out  of  helplessness  into 
helpfulness.  When  tenderness  becomes  a  vir- 
tue, like  all  virtues  it  becomes  heroic.  When 
we  seek  an  example  of  highest  sensibility  and 
truest  tenderness,  we  do  not  take  her  whose 
eyes  are  red  with  weeping  over  a  dead  canary 
bird,  or  her  who  "went  to  bed  downright  sick," 
as  I  once  heard  a  woman  confess,  because 
"Pont,"  the  impudent  little  poodle,  had  his 
foot  pinched  by  the  slamming  of  the  carriage 
door;  but  we  go  to  the  battle-field  to  find  the 
woman  who  carries  her  water  can  and  band- 
ages through    clotted    gore    with    unblanched 


94  TENDERNESS 

cheek.  We  go  to  the  hospital  and  find  the 
true  physician,  who  is  also  the  kind  physician, 
who  dares  not  endanger  the  clearness  of  his 
vision  with  a  tear.  Indeed,  let  those  who 
would  excuse  themselves  from  stern  and  dis- 
agreeable duties  on  account  of  the  tenderness 
of  their  hearts  or  the  sensibility  of  their  nerves 
remember  that  in  life,  as  in  literature,  the 
profession  most  accustomed  to  suffering  has 
furnished  the  most  illustrious  examples  of  the 
tenderness  that  will  not  'break  a  bruised  reed" 
except  "thereby  the  law  of  life  be  established 
upon  the  earth."  Indeed,  the  tenderest  soul  in 
history  finds  one  of  his  most  suggestive  titles 
when  he  is  called  the  "Good  Physician."  One 
of  the  tenderest  little  stories  in  English  liter- 
ature is  the  familiar  one  of  "Rab  and  His 
Friends,"  written  by  John  Brown,  the  good 
physician  of  Edinburgh.  This  tells  how  James 
Noble,  the  carrier,  brought  one  day  into  the 
hospital  yard  on  his  cart  a  woman  with 

"A  most  unforgetable  face,  pale,  lonely,  serious,  delicate, 
sweet: — eyes  such  as  one  sees  only  once  or  twice  in  a  life- 
time, full  of  suffering,  full  also  of  the  overcoming  of  it:  her 
mouth  firm,  patient  and  contented,  which  few  mouths  ever 
are.  I  never  saw  a  more  beautiful  countenance,  or  one  more 
subdued  to  settled  quiet. 


TENDERNESS  95 

•"Maister  John,  this  is  the  mistress.  She  has  got  a  trouble 
in  her  breest,  Doctor — some  kind  of  an  incoming  we  are 
thinking.  Will  you  ta'k  a  look  at  it?  Ailie,  this  is  Maister 
John,  the  young  Doctor,  Rab's  frien',  ye  ken.  We  often 
speak  aboot  you,  Doctor.' 

"And  Solomon,  in  all  his  glory,  could  not  have  handed 
down  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  at  his  palace  gate,  more  tenderly 
than  did  James,  the  Howgate  carrier,  lift  down  Ailie  his 
wife.  *  *  *  'Twas  a  sad  case.  Next  day  on  the  bul- 
letin board  was  the  notice  to  the  young  students, — 


"Up  ran  the  youths,  eager  to  secure  good  places;  in  they 
crowded,  full  of  interest  and  talk.  Don't  think  them  heart- 
less. They  are  neither  better  nor  worse  than  you  or  I;  they 
get  over  their  professional  horror  and  into  their  proper 
work, — and  in  them  pity  as  an  emotion,  ending  in  itself  or 
at  best  in  tears  and  a  long-drawn  breath,  lessens,  while  pity 
as  a  motive  is  quickened,  and  gains  power  and  purpose.  It 
is  well  for  poor  human  nature  that  it  is  so." 

From  the  crowded  clinics  of  the  Edinburgh 
hospital,  as  thus  described  by  the  good  physi- 
cian, to  the  dingy  walls  of  the  Cincinnati  pot- 
tery is  a  great  distance  in  thought  as  well  as  in 
space;    but  human  nature  has    greater  reaches 


96  TENDERNESS 

than  that;  and  in  the  quiet  devotion  of  those 
rude  workingmen  to  a  pale,  emaciated  and 
probably  rickety  lump  of  humanity,  that  they 
had  never  seen,  but  which  lay  in  the  humble 
bed  of  their  fellow  potter,  is  an  illustration  of 
that  high  tenderness  that  is  brave.  In  both 
cases  the  pictures  are  very  sad,  but  as  the  good 
doctor  well  says,  "They  are  better,  much 
better,  than  many  things  that  are  not  called 
sad."  And  they  are  better  because  they  give 
rise  to  a  tenderness  that  is  not  craven,  a  pity 
born  not  out  of  undisciplined  nerves  but  out 
of  warm  hearts.  This  is  a  tenderness  based 
not  on  the  physical,  which  allies  us  to  all  ani- 
mals, but  on  the  spiritual  reality  that  relates  us 
to  God. 

Only  the  brave,  then,  reach  that  tenderness 
that  makes  one  a  servant  of  the  Most  High. 
"1  have////  7ny  spirit  upon  him,"  is  the  word 
of  the  old  prophet.  On  that  account  "the 
bruised  reed  shall  he  not  break.  He  shall  not 
fail  or  become  weary."  We  have  quite  enough, 
perhaps  a  great  deal  too  much,  of  that  emo- 
tion that  "ends  in  itself,  or  at  best  in  tears  and 
a  long-drawn  breath;"  plenty    of    that  tender- 


TENDERNESS  97 

ness  that  stops  with  the  wringing  of  the  hands, 
that  is  so  susceptible  to  good  purposes,  but 
is  so  negligent  of  good  deeds:— that  tenderness 
that  is  so  anxious  that  a  good  thing  may  suc- 
ceed, but  is  so  careful  lest  the  succeeding  drain 
them  of  life's  petty  comforts  and  small  securi- 
ties. But  we  never  have  enough  of  that  "pity 
as  a  motive'  that  quickens,  gains  power  and 
gives  purpose  in  the  presence  of  suffering. 
This  sympathetic  tenderness  is  one  of  the  most 
universal  needs  of  the  human  soul,  because  it 
is  felt  through  all  ranks  and  conditions.  It  is 
the  need  of  the  gifted  and  the  ignorant,  the 
want  of  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  saint  and 
the  sinner. 

All  this  suggests  the  second  element  in  that 
tenderness  that  belongs  to  the  servants  of  the 
Most  High,  that  makes  ministers  of  the  eternal 
gospel  and  protectors  of  bruised  reeds,  name- 
ly, disinterestedness.  The  more  unselfish,  the 
more  divine  is  the  tenderness.  The  most  touch- 
ing thing  in  this  story  of  the  Cincinnati  potters 
is  not  the  thoughtful  ness  of  the  father,  in 
whose  heart  the  boy  nestled  all  day  long  by  a 
divine  necessity.   The  boy's  wan  face  kept  flit- 


98  TENDERNESS 

ting  between  the  father's  eyes  and  his  wheel 
hour  by  hour,  his  wasted  fingers  touched  the 
father's  fingers  more  palpably  than  did  the 
clay  he  molded.  That  child  was  a  part  of 
himself;  in  loving  the  "wee  lad"  he  was  but 
loving  his  own,  aye  himself,  and  the  bits  of 
ribbon,  crimson  glass  or  fragrant  buds  that  he 
carried  home  night  after  night  brought  quick 
and  ample  return  to  the  fatherly  heart  in  the 
shape  of  the  gentle  "thank  you,"  the  brighter 
smile  and  the  more  patient  light  upon  the 
face.  But  all  these  motives  were  wanting 
among  his  fellow  workmen.  The  dingy  potters 
had  their  birds  in  other  nests,  and  the  little 
jars  etched  with  their  stiffened  fingers  and  the 
cups  shaped  with  their  simple  arts  would  have 
been  appreciated  elsewhere.  Their  lives  were 
not  bound  up  in  the  crippled  frame  of  the  in- 
valid boy;  there  was  naught  of  themselves  on 
that  sick  bed;  and  yet  day  by  day  the  fruit 
was  thought  of,  night  after  night  the  old  man's 
hat  contained  the  odd  collection, — a  collection 
gathered  by  a  tenderness  that  was  disifiterested. 
Day  by  day  the  old  man's  labors  were 
lightened,  his  hours  by  the  bedside  lengthened, 


TENDERNESS  99 

through  a  tenderness  that  was  unselfish. 
Friends,  we  should  guard  well  our  lives  in  this 
direction.  Much  selfishness  lurks  in  our  over- 
weening anxiety  and  our  unreasoning  solicitude 
for  our  other  selves.  Our  great  tenderness  for 
our  boy  or  our  girl  not  infrequently  ensnares 
us  unto  great  harshness  or  most  cruel  neglect 
of  some  other  one's  boy  and  some  other  one's 
girL  We  become  so  much  burdened  with  our 
obligations  to  our  homes  that  we  forget  the 
interests  and  needs  of  other  homes.  We  be- 
come so  jealous  of  the  well-being  and,  as  we 
say,  future  prosperity  of  our  family  that  we 
lose  that  sensibility  to  the  needs  of  society 
without  which  we  become  a  burden  and  a 
blight.  An  exclusive  tenderness  often  turns 
out  to  be  a  hurting  selfishness.  That  child  is 
cursed  with  the  affection  of  which  it  holds  ex- 
clusive monopoly.  The  homes  whose  doors  do 
not  swing  easily  out  into  the  great  world  soon 
lose  their  homelike  qualities.  The  heart  treas- 
ures deposited  therein  often  become  non-pro- 
ductive, and  curse  instead  of  bless  the  inmates. 
The  obligations  to  husband,  wife  or  child  that 
are  guarded  by  a  fence  so  high  that  the  claims 


lOO  TENDERNESS 

of  church,  Sunday-school,  society,  state  and 
all  the  wailing  wants  of  the  world  are  looked 
upon  as  rival  claims  to  be  jealously  resented, 
will  sooner  or  later  build  the  fence  so  high 
that  it  will  keep  out  many  of  the  gentle  influ- 
ences, the  sweet  associations,  the  divine  amen- 
ities that  make  the  fireside  a  blessed  shelter 
from  the  storms  of  life  and  the  home  a  peace- 
ful haven  for  the  aged.  I  once  went  to  a  man 
whose  wealth  was  climbing  on  toward  the  mil- 
lions, with  a  cause  which  had  legitimate  claims 
upon  his  interest  because  he  was  a  part  of  hu- 
manity; his  response  was:  "No,  not  a  cent! 
It  is  an  excellent  cause.  It  ought  to  succeed. 
But  I  have  a  family  and  I  must  provide  for 
them;  I  am  getting  old.  A  man  who  does  not 
take  care  cf  his  own  family  is  worse  than  an 
infidel.  I  have  seen  enough  of  this  world  to 
know  that  I  would  prefer  to  see  all  my  children 
buried  to-day  rather  than  to  leave  them  to  the 
cold  charities  of  the  world."  And  as  he  spoke 
his  voice  trembled  and  the  tears  stood  in  his 
eyes.  I  doubted  not  the  sincerity  of  that  feel- 
ing, and  I  know  that  the  practice  of  his  life 
carried  out  the  sentiment.      Lavish  to  wife  and 


TENDERNESS  lOI 

children:  in  the  main  selfish  towards  all  the 
rest  of  the  world.  The  tears  that  stood  in  his 
eyes  did  no  credit  to  his  head,  nor  to  his  heart. 
They  were  born  out  of  the  sensibilities  of 
selfishness,  not  out  of  disinterestedness.  He 
failed  to  see  that  he  was  doing  much  toward 
making  the  world  cold  and  uncharitable,  not 
only  to  other  children  but  to  his  own;  and  if 
the  world  of  human  life  were  made  of  such  as 
he  was  at  that  moment,  it  were  better  his  chil- 
dren were  buried  than  living  in  it,  even  though 
sheltered  by  his  thousands.  Oh,  that  over- 
weening tenderness  of  the  mother,  that  guards 
her  daughter  from  the  discipline  and  joys  of 
unselfish  experiences,  is  not  the  tenderness 
that  has  in  it  the  spirit  of  God!  Rather  is  it 
the  love  that,  anaconda-like,  makes  victims  of 
those  whom  it  embraces. 

The  father  who  denies  his  child  the  discipline 
of  that  self-reliance  that  made  him  strong,turns 
his  blessings  into  curses,  and  the  arms  that 
are  thrown  around  to  protect  the  boy  prove  in- 
stead to  be  the  paws  of  a  bear  that  hug  him 
to  death:  thus  it  is  that  the  fortune  of  the 
father    becomes    the    misfortune    of    the    boy. 


I02  TENDERNESS 

Cruel  is  that  wife  who  allows  her  love  to  make 
her  husband  more  self-centered  and  helpless 
after  marriage  than  he  was  before.  Hurtful 
is  the  tenderness  of  that  husband  whose  very 
affection  makes  a  drooping,  dependent,  cling- 
ing, characterless  vine  of  the  woman  that  God 
has  endowed  with  a  personality  capable  of 
standing  by  his  side  equal  with  himself  before 
God  and  man,  a  co-laborer  and  fellow-sufferer, 
a  sharer  of  his  joys  and  sorrows,  joint  partner 
with  him  in  the  work  of  enlarging  the  bounda- 
ries of  life.  I  doubt  the  happy  outcome  of  the 
marriage  that  is  centered  simply  in  the  dream 
of  two  made  one,  with  no  tender  concern  for 
the  world,  no  hope  to  make  its  woes  less  and 
its  joys  more  by  means  of  the  proposed  alli- 
ance. The  young  man  and  woman  who  join 
hands  at  the  marriage  altar  for  the  simple 
purpose  of  making  each  other  happy  are  ever 
in  danger  of  degenerating  into  seeking  each 
one  his  own  joys,  and  finding  at  last  a  large 
delusion  at  the  bottom  of  the  marriage  cup. 

You  will  not  misunderstand  me.  I  revere 
the  fireside  and  would  fain  ennoble  and  en- 
force all  the  sanctities  of  the  home  circle.   The 


TENDERNESS  IO3 

touching  breadth  of  the  tenderness  of  the 
grimy  potters  in  Cincinnati  illustrates  my 
meaning.  Think  you  that  any  one  of  those 
hundred  clay-soiled  and  dirty-handed  workmen 
went  home  with  a  more  petulant  word  to  his 
wife,  a  less  cheerful  welcome  to  his  own  burly 
boy,  because  he  had  stayed  fifteen  minutes 
after  time  to  shape  that  little  pitcher  for  the 
sick  boy;  or  had  taken  twenty  minutes  of  his 
noon  hour  to  make  a  few  pots  to  fill  out  the 
old  man's  stent  that  he  might  go  home  a  little 
earlier?  Think  you  that  any  one  of  those  hun- 
dred workmen  appreciated  his  own  shanty  the 
less,  because  he  had  tried  to  make  the  home  of 
the  sick  child  more  attractive?  Oh,  the  les- 
sons that  sometimes  come  to  us  from  the  en- 
riched homes  of  the  poor!  We  can  but  deplore 
the  prosperity  that  leads  men  to  be  economical 
even  of  their  tenderness.  Let  us  beware  of  that 
thriftiness  that  doles  out  love  where  it  is  needed 
in  abundance.  It  is  the  danger  of  modern  pros- 
perity that  it  so  complicates  life,  multiplies 
the  needs  of  our  outward  homes,  and  regulates 
by  conventional  necessities  every  hour  of  every 
day,  every  ounce  of  every  energy,  that  it  leaves 


I04  TENDERNESS 

no  time  or  force  for  the  spontaneous  workings 
of  that  Christly  tenderness  that  redeems  the 
sinner  by  kindness,  and  saves  the  world  by 
love.  Beware  of  that  tenderness  that  uncon- 
sciously breaks  a  hundred  reeds  already  bruised 
in  trying  to  secure  the  one  favorite  reed  from 
the  possibility  of  ever  being  bruised.  A  sym- 
pathetic tenderness  is  the  perpetual  Pentecost 
that  makes  intelligible  the  language  of  each 
to  all,  and  this  communion  of  spirit  is  ever  re- 
ciprocal. It  gives  mutual  strength.  She  who 
clutched  at  the  hem  of  the  helper's  garment, 
who  bathed  with  tears  the  feet  of  the  friend 
of  man  and  anointed  his  head  for  the  burial, 
"wrought  a  good  work"  not  only  upon  him; 
but  she  found  renewal  and  forgiveness  in 
her  own  soul  also.  Neither  giving  nor 
receiving  sympathy  is  confined  to  any  con- 
ventional equality.  Jesus  found  it  with  the 
fishermen,  the  lowly  men  and  humble  women 
of  Galilee,  Samaria  and  Bethany.  He  gave  it 
to  and  received  it  from  publicans  and  sinners, 
heretics  and  strangers.  Oh,  there  is  a  sensi- 
bility yet  to  come  that  will  show  a  pitiful  bru- 
tality in  the  flippant  epithets  we  now  toss  com- 


TENDERNESS  IO5 

placently  from  our  lips,  as  though  they  were 
the  exact  phrases  of  political  economy  and  so- 
cial science!  The  time  is  coming  when  men 
will  be  ashamed  to  classify  and  divide  with 
stolid  cruelty  their  own  kin;  those  to  whom 
they  are  bound  by  a  thousand  ties,  subtle  in- 
deed, but  strong  and  inevitable  as  God's  law 
of  gravitation.  He  who  talks  of  "the  masses," 
"the  dangerous  class,"  the  hopeless  class, "  "the 
abandoned,"  "the  atheists,"  "the  infidels,"  "the 
criminals,"  "the  fallen  women"  and  "the  law- 
less men"  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  himself 
outside  and  above  them,  is  a  self-made  spiritual 
exile,  wanting  that  open  vision  and  sensibility 
of  soul  that  becomes  a  conscious  child  of  God. 
Where  the  heart  is  most  human  there  is  the 
most  tenderness;  the  higher  and  broader  the 
soul,  the  greater  the  contact  with  others, — on 
the  more  points  can  it  touch  all  other  souls. 
With  this  breadth  of  life  comes  a  sensibility 
worthy, 

"One  who,  spite  the  wrongs  that  lacerate 
His  weary  soul,  has  never  learned  to  hate." 

"Maister  John,  I  am  for  none  o'yer  strange  nourse  bodies 
for  Ailie.  I'll  be  a  nourse  and  I'll  gang  about  on  my 
stockin'  soles  as  canny  as  a  pussie." 


I06  TENDERNESS 

said    James    to  the  doctor,  when  his  wife  had 

been  helped  back  to    her    hospital    bed.      And 

so  he  did, 

"and  handy  and  tender  and  swift  and  clever  as  any  woman 
was  that  horny-handed  little  man.  Everything  she  got  he 
gave  her.  He  seldom  slept, and  often  I  saw  his  small  shrewd 
eyes  out  of  the  darkness  fixed  upon  her." 

This  was  tenderness  in  the  Poor  Ward  of  the 
Edinburgh  hospital. 

"Not  one  of  them  whispered  a  word,  for  this  solemn 
thing  was  not  to  be  talked  about.  Yet  they  put  these  things 
in  the  old  man's  hat  where  he  found  them.  He  understood 
all  about  it.  Every  day  some  one  did  a  piece  of  work  for 
him  and  put  it  on  the  sanded  plank  to  dry,  so  that  he  could 
come  later  or  go  earlier;  and  when  the  bell  tolled  and  the 
little  cofi&n  came  out  of  the  door,  right  around  the  corner, 
out  of  sight,  there  stood  a  hundred  stalwart  working  men 
from  the  pottery,  with  their  clean  clothes  on,  most  of  whom 
gave  a  half  day's  work  for  the  privilege  of  taking  part  in 
the  simple  procession  and  following  to  the  grave  that  little 
child  which  probably  not  one  had  ever  seen." 

This  was  tenderness  in  the  Cincinnati  pot- 
tery. 

"Whosoever  giveth  a  cup  of  cold  water  unto  one  of  these 
little  ones  doeth  it  unto  me." 

"Neither  do  I  condemn  thee:  go,  sin  no  more." 

"Which  of  these  three  thinkest  thou  proved  a  neighbor  to 
him  that  fell  among  the  robbers?      And    the   lawyer  said: 


TENDERNESS  IO7 

'He  that  showed  mercy  unto  him,'  and  Jesus  said:  'Go  thou 
and  do  likewise.'" 

This  is  the  tenderness  taught  by  the  great 
Master  of  tenderness,  the  world-inclusive  heart 
of  the  Nazarene.  Is  this  not  also  the  tender- 
ness of  the  hospital  and  the  pottery?  Is  it  not 
the  something  that  reaches  from  James  Noble, 
the  Howgate  carpenter,  up  to  the  master  soul 
of  Jesus,  touching  human  life  all  the  way  from 
one  to  the  other;  illuminating,  transfiguring 
everything  from  the  potter's  wheel  in  Cincin- 
nati, up  to  the  cross  on  Calvary? 

This  is  the  tenderness  that  Isaiah  describes, 
as  the  indispensable  attribute  of  the  servant 
of  God.  It  is  not  only  the  delicacy  that  goes 
with  woman's  fingers,  that  sends  jellies  to  sick 
folks,  and  knows  how  to  fix  the  pillow  for  the 
fevered  head;  it  can  bear  the  sight  of  suffering; 
it  is  something  stalwart,  that  goes  with  manly 
men  as  well  as  with  womanly  women;  some- 
thing that  has  courage  and  out-go  to  it.  It  is 
a  world-inclusive  and  life-redeeming  power; 
something  that  rebukes  complacency,  shames 
indolence,  and  invests  every  vocation,  all  ages, 
every  sex,  every  home,  with  its  burden  of  care 


I08  TENDERNESS 

for  the  human  reeds  that  are  being  bruised  on 
every  hand  every  day.  This  divine  tender- 
ness makes  every  one  that  partakes  of  it  will- 
ing to  contribute  to  the  higher  life  of  all.  It 
does  not  say  to  the  abiding  interests  of  life, 
"I  hope  you  will  succeed,"  but  it  says:  "I 
will  help  you  succeed."  The  question  of  every 
truly  tender  soul  is  not  "What  can  they  do?" 
but  "What  can  1  do?" 

If  we  have  caught  any  glimpses  of  this  mighty 
power  to  which  to-day  I  give  the  name  "ten- 
derness," that  is,  love  in  its  helpful  moods, 
kindliness  in  action,  the  affections  at  work, — 
not,  as  the  good  doctor  says,  "an  emotion  end- 
ing in  itself  or  at  best  in  tears  and  a  long- 
drawn  breath,"  but  a  ''motive  that  quickens, 
gives  power  and  purpose," — we  see  how  much 
need  there  is  of  more  tenderness  in  the  world. 
I  have  met  somewhere  a  story  of  a  poor  dis- 
tracted man  who  used  to  travel  up  and  down 
one  of  the  provinces  of  France,  going  from 
house  to  house,  entering  unbidden,  wandering 
from  village  to  village,  accosting  the  men, 
women  or  children  whom  he  met,  always  with 
the  same  question, — "I  am  looking  for  tender- 


TENDERNESS  IO9 

ness,  can  you  tell  me  where  to  find  it?"  The 
simple  country-side  made  light  of  his  innocent 
wanderings  and  would  say,  "Have  you  not 
found  it  yet?"  "No,"  would  be  the  sad  re- 
ply:  "and  yet  I  have  searched  for  it  every- 
where." "Perhaps  you  will  find  it  in  the  gar- 
den." Off  he  would  hurry.  The  gardener 
might  refer  him  to  the  stable,  and  the  stable- 
boy  to  the  next  house,  the  next  house  to  the 
next  village:  so,  mournfully,  to  the  end  of  life, 
the  poor  imbecile,  half  conscious  of  his  hope- 
less search,  half  realizing  the  ridicule  with 
which  he  was  everywhere  received,  died  with- 
out finding  what  he  sought. 

Some  of  the  earlier  languages  have  but  one 
word  for  inspiration  and  insanity:  doubtless 
such  cases  as  this  helped  establish  the  confu- 
sion. How  often  is  uncommon  sense  found  in 
the  absence  of  common  sense!  and  reason 
broken  into  bits,  like  the  colored  fragments  in 
the  kaleidoscope,  sometimes  gives  wonderful 
combinations  of  beauty.  The  story  of  this  poor 
lunatic  hints  at  a  truth  most  pathetic.  How 
hard  it  is  to  find  tenderness!  Lives  are  blight- 
ed, fortunes  ruined,  homes    made  barren,  high 


no  TENDERNESS 

purposes  in  every  community  fall  short  of  frui- 
tion, for  want  of  that  tenderness  that  is  cour- 
ageous and  disinterested.  Plenty  of  kindly 
passion  in  the  world,  perhaps  too  much.  Not 
enough  of  kindly  judgment  and  kindly  will. 
Plenty  of  emotion  represented  by  the  burden- 
some Countess  in  the  home  of  Amos  Barton  in 
George  Eliot's  story,  who  took  great  pains  to 
perfume  the  poor  sick  wife's  handkerchief  and 
smooth  her  pillow,  while  she  continued  to  eat 
the  bread  needed  by  the  poor  parson's  chil- 
dren. Too  little  of  that  motive  represented 
by  Mrs.  Hackit  in  the  same  story,  whose  visit 
to  the  same  vicarage  brought  the  cooked  fowl 
that  was  needed  to  strengthen  the  sick  wom- 
an; or  still  better  the  motive  of  the  reverend 
Martin  Cleves,  the  neighboring  minister,  who 
defended  the  injured  man's  good  name  in  his 
absence,  and  was  by  his  side  in  bereavement; 
the  man  who  went  about  "without  carrying 
with  him  the  suggestions  of  an  undertaker." 
"Tender  motive"  is  a  good  phrase;  it  suggests 
force,  motion,  power;  that  which  can  be,  if 
necessary,  divinely  cruel;  the  tenderness  of 
the  surgeon  with  his  knife;    the  tenderness  of 


TENDERNESS  III 

God's  unswerving  law.     Let    us    go  in    search 
of  that,  adding  to  the  persistency  of  the  luna- 
tic the    sanity  of    the    man    of    Nazareth,  and 
then  we  shall  find  it,  or,  failing  to  find  it,  we 
shall  realize  what  Longfellow  calls  the  divine 
"Insanity  of  noble  minds 
That  never  falters  or  abates, 
But  labors  and  endures  and  waits, 
Till  all  that  it  foresees  it  finds, 
Or  what  it  cannot  find— creates!" 

This  brings  me  to  my  last  thought, — the 
power  of  this  tenderness.  This  needs  but  lit- 
tle amplification,  so  well  is  it  exemplified  in 
the  story  of  the  Cincinnati    potters. 

"The  entire  pottery,  full  of  men  of  rather  course  fiber 
by  nature,  grew  quiet  as  the  months  drifted,  became  gen- 
tle and  kind,  and  some  dropped  swearing  as  the  weary  look 
on  the  fellow- worker's  face  told  them  without  mistake  that 
the  inevitable  shadow  was  drawing  nearer." 

I  do  not  ask  you  to  believe  the  whole  of 
this  story,  much  less  idealize  it.  It  is  easy  to 
exaggerate  the  outv^ard  facts.  I  doubt  not  the 
reporter  yielded  to  this  temptation.  Yet  I  be- 
lieve in  its  essential  truth  because  I  have  so 
often  seen,  as  you  have  seen,  the  sanctifying 
power  of  a  kind  word,  the  renovating  force  in 
a  tender  deed,  the  enlarging  power  of  a  good 


112  TENDERNESS 

word.  The  inward  truth  of  this  story  we  are 
ever  prone  to  understate  and  underestimate. 
Father  Taylor  was  philosophically  right  when 
he  said  in  his  stirring  way,  "It  will  never  do 
to  send  Emerson  to  hell,  for  just  as  soon  as 
he  gets  there  he  will  change  the  climate,  and 
the  tide  of  immigration  will  set  in  that  way." 
A  noble  impulse  changed  into  a  motive  will 
silence  the  clamorous  wranglings  of  selfishness. 
A  noble  man  or  woman  will  shed  a  radiance 
upon  a  ribald  crowd,  so  as  to  make,  for  that 
short  space  of  time  at  least,  profanity  and 
coarseness  impossible.  Do  not  drop  back  into 
a  too  prevalent  sentimentalism  over  this  mat- 
ter. Nothing  but  the  courageous  self-abandon 
of  the  highest  disinterestedness  that  seeks  to 
do  a  kindly  thing  for  the  joy  it  gives  to  an- 
other, that  the  world,  God's  world  and  our 
home,  may  be  made  the  better  thereby,  has 
in  it  this  redeeming  power. 

Once  I  lay, — a  helpless,  fever-smitten  wreck, 
at  the  foot  of  a  great  tree  just  in  the  rear  of 
a  great  battle-line.  Now  and  then  a  stray 
minnie  ball  would  reach  my  neighborhood,  and 
vagrant  shells,   wandering  far    from    their    in- 


TENDERNESS  II3 

tended  destination,  would  burst  in  the  air  high 
above  me.  Troops  were  hurrying  by,  orderlies 
flying  hither  and  thither,  and  all  around  me 
were  the  torn  and  mangled,  gathered  in  a  field 
hospital.  I,  too  weak  to  be  of  any  use,  too 
wasted  even  to  cling  to  life  with  any  tenacity, 
too  sick  to  be  afraid,  lay  there, — the  most  in- 
significant and  helpless  private  among  the 
thousands — when  there  flitted  by,  with  firm 
step  and  gentle  face,  a  prim  and  dainty  wom- 
an. She  placed  in  the  hand  too  weak  to 
hold  it  a  rosy, luscious  apple.  "You  are  thirsty," 
she  said.  "I  will  get  you  a  drink. "  And  soon 
she  came  with  a  spoonful  of  precious  water  in 
a  tin  cup.  "It  was  all  I  could  find,"  she  said. 
She  went  her  way.  I  have  all  my  life,  before 
and  after,  been  the  recipient  of  tender  deeds, 
but  never  have  I  seen  the  like  of  that  apple, 
never  water  so  precious,  nor  a  woman's  hand 
that  carried  so  much  hope  and  renev/al  in  a 
single  touch.  And  thinking  of  it  since,  I  sus- 
pect that  a  part — the  best  part — of  that  act 
lay  in  the  fact  that  it  was  not  lor  me  as  an 
individual,  but  for  me  as  one  in  the  files  of  a 
great  and  noble  army.     She   came    to    me  not 


114  TENDERNESS 

because  I  was  a  friend,  or  a  member  of  any 
narrow  family,  but  because  I  was  a  brother 
man,  the  humble  factor  in  a  great  movement. 
She  was  then  and  there  the  exponent  of  the 
divine  providence.  She  was  in  league  with 
truth,  a  messenger  of  love,  a  representative 
of  God.  I  will  believe  that  the  infinite  mys- 
tery out  of  which  this  Universe  has  been  pro- 
jected is  a  loving  and  lovable  power,  if  that 
love  finds  expression  and  comes  into  conscious- 
ness only  in  that  one  bosom  that  defied  danger, 
lived  above  the  horrors  of  war, that  she  might  be 
helpful  to  me  and  others.  I  will  believe  in  God 
and  will  say  "Our  Father,"  aye  and  "Mother," 
too,  in  my  devotions,  because  the  power 
that  evolves  such  tenderness  blooms  at  times 
to  fatherly  care  and  motherly  affection  in  your 
heart  and  mine,  if  nowhere  else  in  all  the  uni- 
verse. If  there  are  souls  to  whom  this  world 
seems  a  godless  realm,  who  fail  to  find  divine 
tokens  of  love  anywhere,  you  and  I  are  partly 
responsible.  We  have  refused  the  spirit  that 
invites  us  to  become  "those  who  cause  law  to 
go  forth  to  the  nations,  not  to  cry  aloud  nor 
lift  up  the  voice  nor  cause    it  to    be    heard  in 


TENDERNESS  II5 

the  streets,"  but  to  so  live  that  no  "bruised 
reed  be  broken"  by  us  and  no  "glimmering 
flax  be  quenched."  In  us  at  least  let  that 
power  "send  forth  law  according  to  truth."  In 
us  at  least  may  it  not  "fail  or  become  weary 
until  justice  is  established  in  the  earth  and 
distant  nations  wait  for  the  law."  There  ought 
to  be  divine  tenderness  enough  in  our  lives  to 
convert  the  most  skeptical,  to  inspire  the  most 
obstinate  man  to  divine  service,  and  to  make 
robust  the  will  of  the  most  timid  woman. 
Who  will  say  that  the  little  Cincinnati  hunch- 
back lived  in  vain,  if  in  his  short  pain-strick- 
en career  he  had  hallovv^ed  the  life  of  his  father, 
chastened  the  lives  and  mellowed  the  hearts 
of  his  fellow  laborers,  and  touched  the  potter's 
wheel  with  that  same  sacred  oil  of  disinter- 
estedness that  consecrated  the  cross  on  Cal- 
vary, and  perchance  quickened  us  into  more 
courage,  fresh  zeal,  and  touched  us  anew  with 
love's  pitifulness. 

Time  is  flying  ;  each  day  counts  its  last  op- 
portunities. Oh!  that  we  may  feel  now  the 
truth  that  came  too  late  to  the  thriftless  vicar, 
Amos  Barton,  in  the  story,   as   he  stood  beside 


Il6  TENDERNESS 

the  cold  body  of  his  sainted  wife:  "She  was 
gone  from  him  and  he  could  never  show  his 
love  for  her  any  more,  never  make  up  for 
omissions  in  the  past  by  showing  future  ten- 
derness." Oh,  the  bitterness  of  that  midnight 
prostration  upon  the  grave!  If  we  do  not  awake 
to  our  part  and  responsibility  under  this  law 
of  tenderness,  I  believe  it  will  come  to  us 
some  time.  I  hope  and  pray  it  may  come, 
for  better  the  pain  and  the  life  thatcomesthere- 
from  than  the  insensibility  and  the  living  death 
involved  therein. 

"Milly,  Milly,  dost  thou  hear  me?  I  didn't 
love  thee  enough — I  wasn't  tender  enough  to 
thee — but  I  think  of  it  all  now." 


A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER 

"Whosoever   shall   give    one  of    these  little 

ones  a  cup  of  cold  water  only shall  in  no 

wise  lose  his  reward,"  said  Jesus.  There  could 
not  well  be  a  simpler  act,  a  smaller  service, 
than  that;  not  one  you  would  sooner  do  for 
those  whom  you  do  not  like,  or  sooner  ask  from 
those  who  do  not  like  you.  Many  a  time,  as 
Jesus  walked  the  roads  of  Galilee,  he  must 
have  stopped  at  the  door  of  a  stone  hut  or 
rested  by  a  village  spring  and  asked  for  a 
drink  of  water,  just  as  we  do  in  our  country 
tramps.  And  some  mother  turned  at  the  words, 
caught  the  look  in  the  earnest  eyes,  and  set 
down  her  child  to  bring  the  cup  ;  or  some  man, 
hailed  at  his  plough  across  the  field,  pointed 
to  the  kid-skin  bottle  under  the  bush  and  told 
the  stranger  to  help  himself.  No  one  would 
deny  it.  Bread  may  be  doubtful,  but  bubbling 
fountains,  pouring  rivers,  shining  lakes  are  cups 
117 


H8  A   CUP  OF  COLD  WATER 

SO  plentiful  that  few  ever  add  to  the  prayer 
for  bread,  "Give  us  this  day  our  daily  water." 
So  this  teacher  chose  a  cup  of  cold  water  as 
his  emblem  of  small  service,  when  he  wanted 
to  say  that  not  the  slightest  deed  that  is  meant 
for  good  gets  lost  and  goes  uncounted.  The 
deed  is  appraised  by  its  aim.  He  who  offers 
the  cup  to  the  disciple  as  disciple  offers  it  to 
the  teacher,  and  he  who  offers  it  to  the  teacher 
as  teacher  offers  it  to  him  who  sends  the 
teacher;  and  God  takes  notice,  and  the  giver 
shall  in  no  wise  lose  reward.  So  said  Jesus; 
and  he  spoke  the  thought  again  in  his  "Judg- 
ment" parable.  Thrown  out  of  concrete  into 
broad  impersonal  phrase,  the  thought  is  that 
the  smallest  kindness  to  the  humblest  creature 
belongs  to  the  great  economy  that  we  call 
Providence;  that  then  and  there  the  laws  of 
moral  cause  and  effect  begin  to  act;  so  that, 
some  way  or  other,  full  recompense  for  that 
small  deed  is  sure. 

It  is  a  mighty  faith!  It  is  one  of  the  words 
that  show  how  deep-natured  Jesus  vras,  how 
keen  his  spiritual  insight.  Not  a  sparrow  falls 
without  the  Father,  not  a  hair  eludes  his  cen- 


A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER  Iig 

sus,  not  a  drink  of  water  is  forgotten.  You  and 
I  echo  the  words;  can  you  and  I  echo  the 
faith?  But  not  of  the  faith,  nor  of  the  law 
of  recompense  that  holds  good  of  a  drink  of 
water,  will  we  think  just  now, — only  of  the 
Cup-Offerings  themselves,  that  is,  of  little  acts 
of  thoughtfulness  for  one  another. 

It  is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  two- 
thirds  of  all  that  makes  it  "beautiful  to  be 
alive"  consists  in  cup-offerings  of  water.  Not 
an  hour  of  life's  journey  but  is  rendered  easier 
by  their  freshening  or  harder  by  their  absence. 
Why?  Because  most  of  us  are  burden-bearers 
of  one  sort  or  another ;  because  to  most  of  us 
a  large  part  of  the  journey  is  a  dull  and  trivial 
trudge;  because  there  is  much  dust  upon  the 
road,  and — not  so  many  bad  places  as  prob- 
ably we  think —yet  many  common-places:  and 
it  is  load  and  dust  and  stretches  of  the  com- 
mon-place that  make  one  thirsty.  If  the  feel- 
ing on  our  shoulders  were  of  wings  instead  of 
load;  if  on  Mondays,  "in  some  good  cause  not 
our  own,"  we  were  marching  singing  to  a  bat- 
tle, and  on  Saturdays  were    coming  back    vie- 


I20  A   CUP  OF   COLD  WATER 

torioiis,  then  the  greetings  on  the  way  would 
make  less  difference  to  us.  But  as  it  is,  we 
crave  the  roadside  recognitions  which  give 
praise  for  the  good  deed  attempted,  pity  for 
the  hard  luck  and  the  fall,  a  hand-lift  now 
and  then  to  ease  the  burden's  chafe,  and  now 
and  then  a  word  of  sympathy  in  the  step-step- 
stepping  that  takes  us  through  the  dust.  And 
this  is  all  that  most  of  us  can  wait  to  give;  for 
we  too  are  here  on  business.  You  can  not  step 
m}^  journey  for  me,  can  not  carry  me  on  your 
back,  can  not  do  me  any  great  service;  but  it 
makes  a  world  of  difference  to  me  whether  I 
do  my  part  in  the  world  with,  or  without, 
these  little  helps  which  fellow-travelers  can 
exchange.  "I  am  busy,  Johnnie,  and  can't 
help  it,"  said  the  father,  writing  away,  when 
the  little  fellow  hurt  his  finger.  "Yes,  you 
could, — you  might  have  said,  'Oh!'"  sobbed 
Johnnie.  There's  a  Johnnie  in  tears  inside 
of  all  of  us  upon  occasions.  The  old  Quaker 
was  right:  "I  expect  to  pass  through  this  life 
but  once.  If  there  is  any  kindness  or  any 
good  thing  I  can  do  to  my  fellow-beings,  let 
me  do  it  now.  I  shall  pass  this  way  but 
once." 


A   CUP  OF   COLD   WATER  121 

"An  arm  of  aid  to  the  weak, 
A  friendly  hand  to  the  friendless, 
Kind  words,  so  short  to  speak, 
Bat  whose  echo  is  endless, — 
The  world  is  wide,  these  things  are  small. 
They  may  be  nothing,  but  they  are  a  HP'' 

"A  cup  of  cold  water  only."  One  must  not 
forget,  when  handing  it,  that  the  cup  is  one 
thing,  the  water  quite  another.  Tin  dipper  or 
silver  goblet  is  all  one,  provided  we  are  thirsty 
and  the  water  good.  So  the  cup  I  speak  of 
need  be  no  shining  deed  of  service,  need  be 
no  deed  at  all;  it  is  far  oftener  only  a  word, 
or  the  tone  in  a  word,  or  the  smile  with  a 
word.  That  word  or  tone  or  smile  is  the  cupy 
— and  what  is  the  water?  Your  heart's  sym- 
pathy. The  fact  that  you  are  thinking  a  kind 
thought  of  me — you,  of  me — is  the  refresh- 
ment. That  is  what  sends  me  on  the  road 
with  the  coolness  felt  along  the  veins.  Of 
course,  then,  face  and  manner  more  than  hands 
reach  out  the  cup  to  me.  The  brusque  man- 
ner of  one  friend,  his  tin  cup,  may  be  many 
times  more  welcome  than  the  smooth  manner 
— silver-plated  goblet — of  another:  it  holds 
purer    sympathy.      The    nod    with    a  gleam  in 


122  A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER 

the  eyes  and  a  wrinkle  round  them  may  mean 
a  deal  more  of  heart's  greeting  than  another's 
lifted  hat.  A  "Good  morning!"  may  be  ten- 
dered so  respectfully, — and  you  drop  it  at  the 
next  step  as  you  drop  a  boy's  hand-bill  on  the 
street,  hardly  conscious  you  have  held  it;  or 
it  may  come  tossed  to  you,  but  with  something 
in  the  face  behind  the  toss  that  really  makes 
the  next  few  moments  of  the  morning  good. 
I  can  do  you  a  great  favor  in  such  a  way  that 
you  shall  half  hate  me  and  my  favor:  you  can 
accept  from  me  a  favor  in  such  wise  that  I 
shall  feel  as  though  I  had  been  crowned! 

Therefore  there  are  many  fine  cups  passed 
about  that  hold  no  water  at  all,  or  very  little; 
cups  really  made  for  bric-a-brac,  not  service; 
empty  goblets  of  fashion  and  etiquette;  stage- 
tumblers  which  we  actors  hand  about  momen- 
tously,— ^but  with  no  possibility  of  spilling. 
Three  common  kinds  of  courtesy  can  make 
small  claim  to  be  "cups  of  cold  water. "  First 
and  worst  is  the  politeness  deliberately  adopted 
to  serve  self-interest  ;  politeness  by  which  we 
try  to  climb  into  people's  esteem,  intent  upon 
their    hen-roosts.      In    such    courtesy  it    is,  of 


A  CUP  OF   COLD   WATER  I 23 

course,  we  ourselves  Vv'ho  drink  the  water,  while 
going  through  all  the  motions  of  the  Good 
Samaritan.  Next  and  more  innocent  comes  the 
conventional  hat-and-glove  and  call-and-card 
politeness,  so  much  more  common  east  than 
west,  and  in  Europe  than  America;  whose  ab- 
sence, like  a  misplaced  accent,  betrays  the  un- 
trained American  abroad.  This  is  the  realm 
of  Etiquette,  and  Fashion  queens  it  here. 
Many  of  the  customs  she  imposes  are  harmless 
enough,  though  staling  much  the  freshness  of 
one's  manners;  but  many  are  dwarf-lies  which 
taint  the  manner,  until  at  last  no  sympathy 
that  we  can  offer  has  the  natural  sparkle  of 
sincerity.  A  third  kind  of  courtesy,  better  far 
than  this,  yet  with  little  staying  power  to 
quench  thirst,  is  the  off-hand  geniality  easy  to 
those  whose  faces  light  up  readily,  whose 
hands  go  quickly  out,  whose  voices  have  a 
hail-fellow-well-met  ring  for  every  one;  a 
geniality  that  carries  little  thoughtfulness,  lit- 
tle delicacy,  little  reverence,  and  no  self- sacri- 
fice; the  manner,  without  the  heart,  of  sympa- 
thy. It  is  soon  understood.  Of  this  sort  we 
see  more  in  America  than  in  England,  more 
west  than  east. 


124  ^   CUP   OF   COLD  WATER 

And,  in  justice,  let  us  say  of  this  last  kind 
that  it  is  good  as  far  as  it  goes.  It  is  easy  to 
slander  the  politeness  of  the  surface.  Even 
that  second  kind  has  use  as  a  preventive  force. 
It  is  like  the  one  policeman  in  the  village, — 
only  one,  but  he  diffuses  an  immense  protec- 
tion! It  watches  between  neighbors,  arresting 
little  invasions  of  each  other's  comfort  which, 
if  not  arrested,  would  so  harass  good  fellow- 
ship. Some  one  has  well  said,  "Politeness  is 
like  an  air-cushion  ;  there's  nothing  in  it,  but 
it  eases  the  joints  v/onderfully. "  So  call  this 
politeness  of  the  surface  good,  only  not  good 
for  much.  It  carries  small  guarantee  that  the 
cup  of  water  will  be  offered  to  the  little  ones, 
and  still  less  that  it  v/ill  be  offered  when  one- 
self is  thirsty. 

But  it  is  those  ^'little  ones"  that  give  Jesus' 
saying  its  point.  ^'Whoso  shall  give  one  of 
these  little  ones  a  cup:"  that  takes  the  real 
sympathy,  the  real  self-forgetting.  And  v/here 
three  or  four  are  gathered  together  in  any  re- 
lation of  life  whatever,  there  is  almost  sure 
to  be  a  "little  one"  with  reference  to  the  otherS; 


A   CUP   OF   COLD  WATER  125 

— one  not  so  bright  as  they,  not  so  winsome, 
not  so  able  to  hold  his  own.  When  but  two 
meet,  one  is  apt  to  be  a  little,  the  other  a  big 
one.  And  though  to  change  the  circumstances 
of  the  meeting  is  quite  possibly  to  exchange 
the  sizes,  so  that  the  little  one  becomes  the 
big  and  the  big  one  little,  yet  that  again  shows 
that  two  equals  seldom  meet.  We  can  hardly 
talk  together  five  minutes  on  any  subject  touch- 
ing life  without  finding  it  full  in  our  way  to 
say  something  that  may  hurt  and  something 
that  may  help  or  please;  and  those  whom  all 
like  best  largely  win  their  love  by  this  one 
secret, — uniformly  they  avoid  the  hurt  and 
achieve  the  kindness,  either  being  possible. 

For  instance,  in  company, — Boys,  dance  with 
some  of  those  girls  who  have  been  sitting  on 
the  sofa!  Do  it  as  a  cup-offering  of  cold  water, 
— for  no  more  selfish  reason.  But  then  you 
do  not  know  what  grace  it  will  give  you  in 
their  eyes  and  in  the  eyes  of  all  who  enjoy  true 
gentle-manliness.  I  knew  one  rare  in  charac- 
ter and  mind  and  popularity, who  lingers  doubly 
heroed  in  the  memory  of  friends:  they  said 
of  Lowell,  ''He  died  in  the  war, — and  he  danced 


126  A  CUP  OF   COLD  WATER 

with  the  girls  whom  the  others  did  not  dance 
with."  And  Girls,  when  you  are  dissecting  the 
young  men  in  the  party's  after-talk,  and  some 
leave  very  little  of  one  who  is  rather  stupid, 
stand  up  for  him  like  an  unseen  sister,  if  you 
know  him  to  be  pure  and  manly!  If  you  be- 
long to  the  surgeon  class  of  women,  that  fact 
probably  comes  out  in  your  manner  to  himself, 
for  you  are  one  who  is  apt  to  miss  the  oppor- 
tunity of  giving  the  cup  of  water.  Did  you 
ever  read  what  happened  to  get  published  un- 
der the  title  of  "A  Nice  Girl's  Rules," — rules 
made  by  a  certain  girl  for  herself,  when  she 
went  into  company?  They  were  five:  "To  give 
away  more  than  I  spend  on  myself.  To  do  all 
I  can  for  every  one  at  home  first,  before  I  go 
to  walk  or  to  parties.  At  a  ball  to  make  one 
forlorn  girl  happy  and  introduce  her  to  some 
pleasant  gentleman, — and  to  do  this  at  every 
party.  To  draw  other  people  out,  without  try- 
ing to  shine  myself.  As  soon  as  I  feel  that  I 
am  talking  or  acting  in  such  a  way  that  I 
should  hesitate  from  shame  to  pray  at  that  mo- 
ment, to  leave  the  room." 

Again,  with  the    old,    the    conservative,  the 


A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER  12'J 

fixed,  there  is  constant  opportunity  to  render 
service  by  the  mere  tone  of  the  voice  and  the 
deference  of  the  address.  Don't  they  know 
they  are  old?  Don't  they  often  feel  the 
fact  of  their  conservatism  helplessly,  and 
therefore  far  more  painfully  than  any  one 
with  whom  it  chances  to  interfere?  Don't  they 
suspect  over-well  that  life  is  on  the  wane,  and 
that  the  yellow  leaf  shov/s  in  their  talk  as  they 
know  it  is  showing  in  their  face?  More  than 
that  of  any  other  class,  perhaps,  their  appeal 
to  the  young,  the  strong,  the  capable,  is  for  that 
courtly  delicacy  of  attention  which  is  shown, 
not  in  any  richness  of  the  cup,  but  in  the  way 
the  cup  is  offered  to  the  lips. 

Be  a  knight,  be  a  lady,  of  the  New  Chivalry  ! 
Our  words  mount  high, — from  courtesy  to 
courtliness,  from  courtliness  to  chivalry.  The 
essence  of  chivalry  is  to  look  out  for  the  little 
ones.  We  often  talk  of  it  as  if  it  were  a  rev- 
erence due  peculiarly  to  woman;  and  some  fear 
that,  should  women  enjoy  political  equality 
with  men,  chivalry  would  disappear.  It  would 
rather  grow  than  disappear,  even  if  that  were 
all  it  meant, — reverence  of    man    for    woman; 


128  A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER 

for  it  is  a  deepening  reverence,  deeper  far 
than  the  mediaeval  sentiment,  that  underlies 
and  prompts  our  modern  movement  in  behalf 
of  woman's  rights, — and  that  which  begins  in 
a  deepening  feeling  is  not  likely  to  endanger 
the  expression  of  the  feeling.  But  chivalry 
means  far  more  than  reverence  of  man  for 
woman.  It  means  reverence  of  strength  for 
weakness,  wheresoever  found.  Men  often  need 
more  of  it  from  a  woman  than  they  can  possi- 
bly give  to  her.  Chivalry  is  that  in  me  to 
which  every  one  whom  I  have  power  to  injure 
can  appeal,  in  virtue  of  that  fact,  with  the  un- 
spoken plea,  "You  must  use  your  power  to 
bless!"  Wherever  a  child  can  be  helped, 
wherever  a  stranger  can  be  guided,  or  a  friend 
who  is  shy  be  set  at  ease,  wherever  a  weak 
brother  can  be  saved  from  falling  and  its 
shame,  wherever  an  old  man's  step  can  be 
made  easy,  wherever  a  servant's  position  can 
be  dignified  in  his  eyes, — is  the  chance  for 
chivalry  to  show  itself.  I  do  not  recognize  a 
different  feeling  in  the  one  case  from  that  which 
moves  me  in  the  other.  The  white-haired  man, 
the  tired  errand-boy,  the  servant-girl  with  the 


A   CUP  OF   COLD   WATER  129 

heavy  burden,  make  the  same  kind  of.  demand 
upon  me;  and  all  of  them  make  more  demand 
than  the  lady  whose  very  silk  will  make  peo- 
ple enough  look  out  for  her.  They  all  challenge 
my  chivalry,  that  is,  my  sense,  not  of  gener- 
osity, but  of  obligation  to  help,  just  because 
I  can  give  the  help  and  here  is  one  who  needs 
it.     Noblesse  oblige! 

And  because  we  already  see  the  Kingdom 
come  in  rare  souls  here  and  there,  we  may 
look  forward  to  the  time  when  chivalry  shall 
have  in  common  parlance  this  broadened  mean- 
ing; when  to  the  employee  in  the  store,  to  the 
poor  in  the  shanty, to  the  servant  in  the  kitchen, 
one  will  feel  more  honor  bound  to  be  thought- 
fully attentive,  so  far  as  rights  and  feelings 
are  concerned,  than  to  any  others  in  the  cir- 
cle of  our  friends.  To  be  rough  to  social  su- 
periors may  show  something  of  the  fool,  but 
to  be  rough  to  inferiors  certainly  shows  in  us 
something  of  the  savage  and  the  brute.  "Who- 
ever gives  these  little  ones  the  cup, "  we  read. 
The  littler  the  one,  the  more  imperious  will 
become  the  impulse  to  offer  it,  the  more  im- 
possible it  will  be  to  be  untender.     Selfishness 


130  A   CUP  OF  COLD   WATER 

will  have  to  be  kept  for  equals,  if  for  any.  At 
present  it  is  usually  the  other  way.  The  lady 
often  wears  her  patience  with  her  ribbons  in 
the  parlor,  and  her  impatience  with  her  apron 
in  the  basement;  and  at  the  house-door,  in  the 
shop,  and  in  the  court-room,  the  poor  man  is 
apt  to  have  the  fact  of  poverty  stamped  into 
him  by  those  who  to  equals  are  urbane  and  to 
superiors  right  worshipful.  And  yet  it  takes 
so  little  to  make  us  in  humbler  station  or  of 
humbler  powers  bless  those  who  are  above  us, 
— so  little  to  make  those  poorer  than  ourselves 
in  any  way  bless  us!  Not  m.oney,  not  gifts,  but 
the  simple  evidence  of  respect  for  the  station 
and  those  in  it,  of  fellow-sympathy  in  their 
wants  and  their  anxieties,  of  appreciation  of 
their  difficulties — a  pleasant,  cheerful,  equaliz- 
ing word — will  be  a  very  Jesus-cup  of  cold  water 
to  many  a  rough-faced  man  and  slovenly 
dressed  woman  in  the  forlorn  districts  of  our 
city.  When  happiness  can  be  manufactured  so 
cheaply,  and  sells  so  high, and  is  always  wanted 
in  the  market,  it  seems  a  pity  that  more  of 
us  do  not  set  up  in  the  business.  Listen  to  this 
story  from  TourgU(§neff's  "Poems  in  Prose:" 


A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER  I3I 

"I  was  walking  in  the  street, — a  beggar 
stopped  me,  a  frail  old  man.  His  tearful  eyes, 
blue  lips,  rough  rags,  disgusting  sores — oh, 
how  horribly  poverty  had  disfigured  the  un- 
happy creature!  He  stretched  out  to  me  his 
red,  swollen,  filthy  hand;  he  groaned  and 
whimpered  for  alms.  I  felt  in  all  my  pockets. 
No  purse,  watch  or  handkerchief  did  I  find. 
I  had  left  them  all  at  home.  The  beggar  waited, 
and  his  outstretched  hand  twitched  and  trem- 
bled slightly.  Embarrassed  and  confused,  I 
seized  his  dirty  hand  and  pressed  it:  'Don't 
be  vexed  with  me,  brother!  I  have  nothing 
with  me,  brother.'  The  beggar  raised  his  blood- 
shot e3^es  to  mine,  his  blue  lips  smiled,  and 
he  returned  the  pressure  of  my  chilled  fingers. 
'Nevermind,  brother,'  stammered  he;  'thank 
you  for  this, — this  too  was  a  gift,  brother.' — I 
felt  that  I,  too,  had  received  a  gift  from  my 
brother. " 

Even  our  dumb  animals  appeal  for  "chiv- 
alry." They,  too,  dcxe  persons;  ihey  are  "mem- 
bers" of  our  household.  "Treat  a  cow  as  if 
she  were  a  lady,"  is  the  inscription  over  the 
barn-door  of  one  of  our  great  Wisconsin  dairy- 


132  A   CUP  OF   COLD   WATER 

men.  ''My  dog,"  "my  horse,"  I  say;  but  that 
dog  belongs  first  to  himself  before  he  belongs 
to  me:  even  his  body  does,  and  his  soul  is  all 
his  own.  "Show  me  a  bill  of  sale  from  the 
Almighty!"  said  the  Vermont  judge  to  the 
slave-hunter  claiming  his  "property."  Our 
creature's  due  is  something  behind  m.ercy, — 
justice.  It  has  rights.  To  become  the  "own- 
er" of  an  animal  is  to  enter  into  a  contract 
v/ith  a  fellow-creature,  a  very  "little  one," — 
and  at  once  the  Golden  Rule  and  the  laws  of 
ethics  begin  to  apply.  And  surely  the  census 
of  these  "little  ones"  will  soon  include  the 
birds.  Millions  of  them  have  been  slain  each 
year  of  late  simply  to  deck  our  sister's  hat! 
But  the  mother-heart  of  England  and  Amer- 
ica is  at  last  beginning  to  remem.ber  that  every 
soft  breast,  every  shining  wing,  worn  on  a 
hat  meajis  that  some  tiny  mother  or  father-heart, 
tiny,  but  capable  of  loving  much  and  toiling 
for  its  brood,  has  been  pierced  through  just  to 
set  the  decoration  there.  And  this  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  of  the  Christ-love!  Will  you 
not  join  that  Total  Abstinence  society  whose 
pledge  for  women  is,   "No    mere    or?ia??te?it    of 


A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER  I 33 

mine  shall  cost  a  life;"  whose  pledge  for  men 
is,  "No  mere  sport  of  mine  shall  cost  a  life, — 
no  death  shall  make  my  holiday?" 

And  now  what  shall  we  say  of  these  cup- 
offerings  in  the  Home?  That  they  are  of  more 
importance  there  for  true  house-furnishing  than 
either  money  or  good  taste  or  both  combined. 
What  are  thej'  there  at  home?  Pleasant  smiles  ; 
gentle  tones;  cheery  greetings;  tempers  sweet 
under  a  headache  or  a  business-care  or 
the  children's  noise;  the  ready  bubbling-over 
of  thoughtfulness  for  one  another; — and  habits 
of  smiling,  greeting,  forbearing,  thinking,  in 
these  ways.  It  is  these  things  above  all  else 
which  make  a  home  "a  building  of  God,  a  house 
not  made  with  hands;"  these  that  we  hear  in 
the  song  of  "Home,  sweet  Home."  Into  a 
five  hundred  dollar  shanty  put  strangers  who 
begin  to  practise  the  habit  of  anticipative 
thoughtfulness  for  each  other,  and  we  have  a 
"home."  Put  husband,  wife  and  the  three 
children  into  a  fifty  thousand  dollar  house,  and 
let  them  avoid  this  interchange  of  gentleness, 
and  we  have  only  family-barracks. 


134  A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER 

Perhaps  the  best  single  test  of  a  man  lies  in 
the  answer  to  the  question,  What  is  he  where 
he  is  most  at  home?  If  there,  where  he  is 
most  familiar  and  in  power,  considerateness 
lessens  and  tenderness  evaporates  and  talk 
grows  masterful,  as  if  he  had  more  rights  than 
his  wife,  then  the  heart  is  shallow  and  the 
character  is  thin.  At  home  one  should  be  his 
best,  his  most  graceful,  most  agreeable, — and 
more  so  ten  years  after  marriage  than  ten  days 
after.  The  same,  of  course,  with  her.  Yet 
strange  to  think  how  many  persons  save  their 
indifference  for  this  one  place  that  should  be 
all  tenderness;  how  many  take  pains  with  their 
courtesy  and  geniality  abroad,  but  at  home 
glide  into  the  habit  of  letting  geniality  be 
taken  for  granted  instead  of  being  granted. 
That  tells  in  the  course  of  years;  for  the  cold 
moods,  the  silent  ways,  the  seeming-harmless 
banterings,  are  the  ways  and  moods  that  in- 
crease with  the  years.  By  and  by,  when  the 
children  are  growing  up  and  growing  away 
from  us,  and  we  are  growing  old  and  would 
like  kind  words  and  looks  a  little  more  our- 
selves, we  shall  wish  for  our  own  sake  and  for 
theirs  that  we  had  done  differently. 


A  CUP   OF    COLD   WATER  I 35 

Men  often  think,  "They  love  us  and  we 
know  it;  we  love  them  and  they  know  it." 
Nay,  but  it  is  not  enough  to  have  the  love  and 
do  the  duty  in  silence.  We  live  not  by  bread 
alone,  but  by  every  word  that  proceedeth 
out  of  the  mouth  of  those  we  love.  Out  of 
the  mouth, — it  is  the  spoken  love  that  feeds. 
It  is  the  kindness  offered  that  furnishes  the 
house.  Even  we  men  who  push  it  coldly  away 
want  to  have  it  offered  somehow,  sometime, 
by  the  wife,  the  sister,  the  children;  now  and 
then  we  want  it  visible.  The  presence  of 
those  children  in  the  rooms  is  a  constant  im- 
portunity for  the  outspoken,  not  the  silent,  sort 
of  love.  Children  bare  of  kisses  seem  as  cold  as 
children  bare  of  clothes.  We  have  seen  chil- 
dren who  evidently  did  not  know  how  to  kiss 
their  fathers, — they  went  about  it,  when  they 
had  to,  so  shyly  and  awkwardly, — and  were  for- 
getting how  to  kiss  their  mothers.  And  as  for 
women,  it  is  a  woman  who  v/rites,  and  all  who 
have  a  mother  or  a  sister  know  hov/  truly  she 
writes, — "Men,  you  to  whom  a  woman's  heart 
is  entrusted,  can  you  heed  this  simple  prayer, 
'Love    me,  and    tell    me    so    sometimes^?'*     Na- 


136  A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER 

thaniel  Bowditch,  author  of  the  famous  "Nav- 
igator," added  to  his  fame  by  formulating  this 
law  in  the  science  of  married  life:  "Whenever 
she  came  into  my  presence,  1  tried  to  express 
to  her  outwardly  something  of  the  pleasure 
that  it  always  gave  me."  A  navigator,  that, 
worth  trusting!  On  the  other  hand,  there  are 
homes  whose  atmosphere  suggests  that  the 
man  has  never  told  the  woman  that  he  loved 
her — but  once,  and  that  then  he  was  exagger- 
ating. The  loneliness  of  sisters  unbrothered 
of  their  brothers!  The  loneliness  of  wives 
unhusbanded  of  their  husbands, — who  go  back 
to  the  store,  the  club,  the  lodge-room,  night 
after  night,  and  scarcely  see  their  children  to 
get  acquainted  with  them  save  on  a  Sunday 
afternoon!  Yes,  and  sometimes  the  loneliness 
of  men!  What  half-tragedies,  in  homes  we 
know,  our  thought  falls  on  at  these  words! 
Homes  that  began  as  fresh  and  bright  with 
love  as  ours,  with  as  rich  promise  of  joy,  with 
as  daring  a  trust  that  the  years  would  bring 
new  sweetness  and  carry  none  away, — now, 
homes  where  the  sweetness  comes  like  the  warm 
days    in    November,  and    the    heart-numbness 


A  CUP   OF   COLD  WATER  I37 

stays  and  grows  like  the  cold.  The  lonely 
ones  can  hardly  tell  you  why  themselves;  but 
you  and  I  perhaps  could  tell  them  why.  One 
writes,  "I  have  known  av/ifewho,  though  she 
nursed  his  children,  and  took  care  of  his  house- 
hold, and  sat  down  with  him  to  three  daily 
meals,  was  glad  to  learn  her  husband's  plans 
and  purposes  through  a  third  person,  to  whom 
he  had  spoken  more  freely  about  the  things 
of  deepest  concern  than  he  could  ever  speak  to 
her.  The  inexpressible  pain  caused  by  with- 
held confidence,  the  pressure  and  nightmare 
of  a  dumb,  repressed  life,  soon  did  its  work 
in  changing  her  fresh  and  buoyant  youth  to 
gray-haired,  premature  age."  Have  you  never 
seen  a  death,  or  at  least  a  wasting  sickness, 
like  that  which  Harriet  Hunt  called  "Found 
Frozen"? 

"She  died,  as  many  travelers  have  died 
O'ertaken  on  an  Alpine  road  by  night, 
Numbed  and  bewildered  by  the  falling  snow; 
Striving,  in  spite  of  failing  pulse  and  limbs 
Which  faltered  and  grew  feeble  at  each  step, 
To  toil  up  the  icy  steep  and  bear, 
Patient  and  faithful  to  the  last,  the  load 
Which  in  the  sunny  morn  seemed  light. 


138  A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER 

And  yet 
'Twas  in  the  place  she  called  her  home,  she  died! 
And  they  who  loved  her,  with  the  all  of  love 
Their  wintry  natures  had  to  give,  stood  by 
And  wept  some  tears,  and  wrote  above  her  grave 
Some  common  record  which  they  thought  was  true: 
But  I  who  loved  her  first,  and  last,  and  best, — I  /mewP^ 

Nor  is  it  enough  to  have  moods  of  affection- 
ate expression.  That  would  be  like  trusting 
for  our  water  to  an  intermittent  spring:  the 
thirst  will  come  when  the  water  is  not  there. 
The  habit  of  love-ways  is  the  need.  In  many 
a  home  neuralgia  or  dyspepsia  or  the  business- 
worry  makes  the  weather  within  as  changeable 
as  it  is  without  in  a  New  England  spring: 
sometimes  a  morning  greeting  all  around  that 
seems  like  a  chorus  to  one's  prayer,  and  then 
a  table-talk  of  sympathy  that  sends  one  bravely 
out  to  his  work,  and  one  cheerily  about  her 
house,  and  the  children  brightly  off  to  school, 
each  with  a  sense  that  the  best  time  in  the 
day  will  be  the  time  which  brings  them  all 
once  more  together, — sometimes  so,  and  some- 
times a  depot-breakfast,  where  no  eye  meets 
eye,  and  you  hear  yourself  eat,  and  the  still- 
ness is  broken  by  dish-jogglings  and  criticisms 


A   CUP  OF   COLD   WATER  I 39 

on  what  is  in  the  dishes,  or  what  ought  to  be 
and  isn't,  and  then  a  scurry  off  like  boys  let 
loose  from  school. 

How  is  it  with  ourselves?  Each  one  had 
better  ask  himself  the  question  in  the  quiet, 
now  and  then.  Are  our  homes  more  tender 
than  they  were  a  year  ago,  or  has  love  grown 
dimmer  in  them?  Are  we  closer  to  each 
other*  s  hearts,  or  more  wrapt  up  in  silent 
selves?  Do  we  spring  more  readily  for  those 
who  call  us  by  the  home-names,  or  do  the  old 
sounds  make  eyes  a  little  colder  turn  to  look? 
Are  the  year's  best  festivals  the  anniversaries 
of  the  home-love, — the  meeting-day,  the  en- 
gagement-day, the  marriage-day,  the  birth-days 
and  the  death-days?  It  is  not  bread  you 
chiefly  owe  your  family.  Father.  It  is  not 
mended  clothes.  Mother.  It  is  not  errands 
done  and  lessons  learnt.  Children,  that  make 
your  part.  It  is  the  way  in  which  the  part, 
whatever  it  be,  is  done  that  makes  the  part. 
The  time  comes  when  we  would  almost  give 
our  right  hand,  could  we  recall  some  harsh 
word,  some  indifferent,  cutting  manner,  some 
needless,  selfish  opposition.     Happy  we,  if  the 


40 


A   CUP   OF   COLD   WATER 


one  gone  out  from  our  homes  into  the  unseen 
Home  has  left  us  no  such  ache  to  bring  the 
bitter  tears!  "Too  late!  Too  late  to  love  him 
as  we  might,  and  let  hifn  know  itT  "Too  late 
to  let  her  know  that  we  knew  she  was  sweet!" 
Among  all  "might-have-beens"  does  the  wide 
world  hold  another  one  so  sad?  There  is  only 
one  way  to  make  that  sad  thought  die, — and 
that  way  is  to  clear  untenderness  utterly  from 
heart  and  from  the  7na7iner  toward  the  others 
who  still  make  home  '"home"  to  us;  to  re- double 
thoughtfulness  for  them,  and  try  to  fill  up  the 
measure  of  the  missed  love  there.  When,  at 
last,  the  tenderness  of  our  bettered  service  is 
blossoming  evenly,  unfailingly,  on  the  root  of 
that  old  sad  memory,  perhaps  we  can  feel  self- 
forgiven  and  at  peace. 

One  question  more.  Is  it  easy,  after  all,  to 
offer  simple  "cups  of  cold  water"?  This  analysis 
makes  us  feel  that  unadulterated  cold  v/ater 
may  be  a  rarer  liquid  than  we  thought ;  and 
that  if  one  offers  it  to  "little  ones,*'  offers  it 
habitually,  offers  it  when  thirsty  himself,  and 
seeks  opportunities  to  offer  it,  the  j-/^/;/^  must 


A   CUP   OF   COLD    WATER  I4I 

lie  not  on  the  surface  but  in  the  depths  of 
character.  More  than  most  other  signs  such 
cup-offering  tells  of  a  nature  sweet  and  sound 
at  center.  It  is  comparatively  easy  under 
duty's  lead  to  brace  the  will  and  go  forward, 
dreading  but  unflinching,  to  some  large  self- 
sacrifice;  but  harder  far,  through  sickness  as 
in  health,  through  tire  as  well  as  rest,  through 
the  anxieties  as  through  the  quiets  of  life,  to 
be  sure  to  lift  a  mere  cup  of  water  to  even  a 
brother's  lips.  If  you  are  sure  to  do  this  for 
any  body  as  for  a  brother,  you  are  glorious! 
So  hard  sometimes  are  these  small  deeds  that 
there  are  cup-offerings  of  history  and  legend 
that  have  grown  proverbial  as  types  of  self- 
forgetting.  You  remember  the  old  Bible  story 
about  David's  three  heroes  who  brake  the  ranks 
of  the  Philistines  to  bring  their  thirsty  king  a 
cup  of  water,  and  what,  when  he  received  the 
draught,  he  did  with  it  to  honor  them  and 
God;  and  that  widow  who  gave  the  hungry 
prophet  her  last  handful  of  meal, — and  there 
was  famine  in  that  land.  You  may  have  read 
of  the  Mohammedan  who  lived  in  a  city  built 
amid  a  wide  hot  plain,  and  who    made  a  way- 


142 


A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER 


side  booth  a  few  miles  out  on  the  highway, 
and  daily  went  and  filled  a  vase  of  water  there 
for  fainting  travelers  as  they  approached,— and 
once  it  saved  a  life.  And  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
all  have  heard, — how  he,  the  wounded  Gen- 
eral, paused  with  his  hand  half-lifted  to 
his  lips,  and  gave  his  draught  away  to  the 
private  soldier,  wounded  worse, — the  "little 
one."  Brother-souls  to  Sir  Philip  were  the 
soldier  in  our  own  war,  who,  burning  with 
thirst  from  a  wound  in  the  mouth,  refused  to 
touch  the  canteen,  lest  the  blood  from  his  torn 
lips  should  spoil  the  water  for  the  wounded 
comrades  lying  near;  and  that  French  soldier, 
who  begged  the  surgeon  to  keep  his  ether  bot- 
tle for  men  hurt  worse  than  he,  and  stifled  his 
own  groan  with  his  bloody  handkerchief.  Are 
such  acts  rare?  No  doubt:  yet  think  not  that 
they  happen  by  the  ones  and  twos.  Probably 
no  battle-field  but  in  its  red  dew  blossoms  with 
these  acts  of  brotherhood,— of  angelhood. 

But  when  such  things  happen  on  any  of  the 
battle-fields  of  life,  believe  not,  either,  that  the 
deeds  begi7i  upon  those  battle-fields,  that  they 
are  the  first  heroism  of  their  doers.   Only  souls 


A  CUP  OF  COLD  WATER  I43 

wonted  to  sweetness  and  self  forgetting  brim 
over  with  it  at  such  hours.  The  little  thing 
that  makes  a  moment  great  is  never  all  done  at 
the  moment.  True — and  what  a  prophecy  it  is 
for  human  nature! — true,  the  average  man,  in 
health,  will  sometimes  on  an  instant  rise  to 
the  death-height  of  self-forgetting;  for  a 
stranger's  sake  will  leap  into  the  sea  to  save, 
will  leap  before  the  rushing  engine.  But  /;/ 
his  agony  does  a  man  reach  even  to  the  cup's 
height  for  another,  unless  the  years  behind 
have  made  him  ready  for  his  instant?  Such 
little  acts  as  Sidney's  and  our  soldier's,  there- 
fore, live  as  the  ideals  of  service,  and  set  the 
standard  of  cup-bearing.  They  set  the  stand- 
ard where  Jesus  would  have  set  it;  —  where  he 
did  set  it  when  in  his  own  agony  he  prayed, 
"Father,  let  this  cup  pass  from  me, — yet  not 
my  will,  but  thine  be  done!"  They  uplift  us 
to  the  understanding  of  his  thought  that  who- 
so does  these  things  to  "little  ones"  does  them 
unto  God. 

And  then  the  great  thought  comes  full  cir- 
cle: we  see  that  we  can  only  do  a  deed  to  God 
by  doing  that  deed /^r  him, — only  by   offering 


144  ^   CUP  OF  COLD  WATER 

ours  as  the  hands  with  which  it  shall  be  done. 
Our  human  love  for  one  another,  and  all  our 
human  help,  is  not  less  his  for  being  ours. 
"God's  lender  mercy"  is  the  name  in  heaven 
for  what  we  call  on  earth — "a  drink  of  water." 
Many  dear  things  of  his  providence  he  hands  to 
his  little  ones  by  each  other.  Sometimes,  how 
can  he  reach  them  else?  And,  soir.etimes, 
whom  can  he  use  to  reach  them  but  just  you 
and  me? 


THE  SEAMLESS  ROBE 

"Now  the  coat  was  without  seam,  woven  from  the  top 
throughout." — John  xix:  23. 

The  unquestioned  tendency  of  all  science 
is  toward  Unity.  With  every  advance  in 
knowledge  some  apparent  ^/i"order  becomes 
orderly;  the  dis']ointed  becomes  jointed.  No 
matter  how  exceptional  a  fact  may  appear, when 
closely  studied  and  mastered  it  quietly  takes 
its  place  as  a  link  in  the  endless  chain  of 
law;  it  becomes  at  once  the  effect  of  some  an- 
tecedent cause,  and  the  cause  of  some  subse- 
quent effect. 

Professor  Tyndall,  in  a  presidential  address 
to  the  British  Association  some  years  ago,  said 
that  the  most  important  discovery  of  the  cen- 
tury is  that  known  as  the  "Correlation  and 
Conservation  of  Force."  This  principle,  so 
startling  when  first  announced,  is  now  a  mat- 
115 


146  THE    SEAMLESS    ROBE 

ter  of  interesting  but  familiar  demonstration 
to  our  public  school  children.  Heat,  light, 
electricity,  chemical  action,  etc.,  instead  of 
being  distinct  properties  inherent  in  the  mat- 
ter that  reveals  them,  are  but  varying  modes 
of  motion,  differing  phases  of  the  undefined 
reality  which  science  calls  force.  These  mani- 
festations, which  a  hundred  years  ago  were  sup- 
posed to  be  not  only  different  but  antagonistic 
elements  in  nature,  are  now  made  to  play  hide- 
and-seek  under  the  hand  of  the  experimenter. 
They  change  their  guise  as  often  and  as  prompt- 
ly as  the  fabled  gods  of  Greece.  One  of  the 
first  discoverers  in  this  direction  was  our  own 
Benjamin  Thompson.  He  was  born  in  Mass- 
achusetts in  1753  and  sailed  for  Europe  just 
before  the  Revolutionary  War,  and  there  be- 
came so  eminent  in  science  that  he  was  titled. 
He  took  his  new  name  from  the  New  England 
village  in  which  he  taught  at  the  age  of  sev- 
enteen, and  is  known  in  history  as  Count  Rum- 
ford.  While  inspecting  the  boring  of  cannon 
in  the  Munich  arsenal,  he  discovered  that  the 
increasing  heat  in  the  brass  came  not  from  some 
latent  quality  released  by  pressure,  as  was  the 


THE    SEAMLESS    ROBE  I47 

common  opinion,  but  that  it  was  the  transfor- 
mation of  the  force  applied  to  the  drill.  To 
state  it  in  its  most  simple  form,  the  heat  came 
not  from  the  brass,  but  from  the  horse  that 
furnished  the  power.  The  muscular  energy  of 
the  horse  was  changed  into  the  motion  of  the 
drill,  and  this  in  turn  became  the  heat  of  the 
brass.  The  same  transformation  takes  place 
when  the  hands  are  warmed  by  vigorous  rub- 
bing. The  sudden  application  of  the  brake 
to  the  rolling  car  wheel  is  changed  into  heat 
and  oftentimes  into  light.  You  feed  the  tack 
machine,  that  cuts  off  six  hundred  tacks  a 
minute,  with  a  strip  of  cold  iron,  but  if  you 
pick  up  one  of  the  tacks,  made  in  the  wink  of 
an  eye,  it  will  burn  you.  The  heated  steam 
moves  the  piston.  In  the  calcium  light  we 
have  heat  converted  into  light.  In  photography 
light  becomes  chemical  action.  The  electric 
light  that  enables  the  diver  to  study  ghastly 
scenes  in  the  cabins  of  sunken  ships;  the  bar 
of  iron  that  is  charged  with  magnetism,  when 
it  is  encircled  with  an  electric  current;  the 
chemical  affinity  that  precipitates  the  metallic 
solution    upon    the    printer's    form  immersed 


148  THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE 

in  the  copper  bath,  thus  making  the  electro- 
type plates  from  which  our  books  are  printed, 
— are  a  few  illustrations  of  the  thousand  ways 
in  which  this  principle  is  utilized  in  the  amen- 
ities and  humanities  of  the  industrial  arts. 

More  sublime  are  the  exemplifications  of 
this  principle  in  the  great  changes  that  take 
place  in  the  laboratory  of  nature.  Gravitation 
precipitates  cosmic  matter  into  our  planetary 
center.  It  becomes  the  heat  and  light  of  the 
sun.  These  are  reconverted  into  the  power 
that  lifts  the  clouds  out  of  the  ocean,  condenses 
them  on  mountain  side,  distills  them  again 
upon  meadow  and  woodland.  Under  the  guise 
of  the  laws  of  vegetation  forests  are  reared  to 
be  again  buried,  condensed  and  preserved  in 
the  coal-beds  of  the  world.  Gloomy  bank- 
vaults  are  these  in  which  are  deposited  the 
accumulated  sunbeams  of  millenniums. 
Through  the  oven  and  the  loaf  these  again  be- 
come the  human  muscle  and  brain,  the  highest 
efflorescence  of  which  is  the  poet's  rhapsody 
and  the  lover's  ecstasy.  Through  the  cornfield 
the  sun  finds  its  way  into  the  horse  that  strains 
the  collar,  and  the  hand  of  the  man  that  holds 
the  guiding  rein. 


THE    SEAMLESS    ROBE  I49 

The  earlier  nature-worshipers  were  poorly 
agreed  in  their  devotions;  some  worshiped 
the  stars,  more  the  sun,  some  revered  the 
lightning,  whilst  still  others  were  awed  into 
fear  or  touched  with  reverence  by  meteoric 
stone,  tree,  flower,  bird  or  beast.  Now,  there 
was  meaning  in  their  devotion,  but  little  sense 
in  their  quarreling.  It  was  the  same  divine 
mystery  that  consecrated  each  shrine;  the  same 
divinity  made  holy  each  altar;  it  was  the  same 
God,  masking  in  all  these  ever  shifting  forms. 
In  all  their  mumblings  we  read  rude  phrases 
of  the  universal  ritual;  the  soul  of  man  join- 
ing in  the  worship  that  will  never  be  outgrown; 
a  worship  inspired  by,  and  directed  to,  the 
reality  which  Herbert  Spencer  calls  "the  cause 
which  transcends  our  knowledge  and  concep- 
tion, in  asserting  which  we  assert  an  uncon- 
ditional reality  without  beginning  and  without 
end." 

The  history  of  religion  as  well  as  that  of 
science  proves  that  however  ignorance,  super- 
stition and  bigotr}^  may  tug  away  at  different 
sections  of  nature's  robe,  it,  like  the  coat  of 
Jesus,  is  "woven  from  the  top  throughout  with- 
out seam." 


150  THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE 

See  how  this  law  of  unity  weaves  all  human 
experience  into  one  seamless  robe.  The  older 
school-books  taught  confidently  of  five  senses, 
seeing,  smelling,  hearing,  tasting,  feeling;  but 
the  newer  science  resolves  these  five  back 
into  one  and  says  they  are  all  phases  of  the 
one  sense,  touch.  When  the  waves  of  the  un- 
known something  are  gathered  upon  the  retina 
of  the  eye,  the  optic  nerve  reports  the  touch. 
When  they  strike  more  heavily  and  slowly  the 
drum  of  the  ear,  the  auditory  nerve  feels  and 
reports  the  touch.  Smell  is  the  touch  of  the 
nostril,  and  taste  the  touch  of  the  mouth. 
Language  is  the  primal  inspiration.  Even  the 
bad  grammar  of  the  children  frequently  con- 
tains a  subtle  philosophy,  and  so  we  find 
that  the  intuition  of  speech  anticipated  the 
latest  physiology,  when  it  led  us  to  confound 
the  adjectives  of  sensation,  as  when  we  speak 
of  "sweet  sounds,"  '* soft  pictures,"  "smooth 
colors,"  "rough  smell"  and  "hard  flavors,"  or 
as  when  the  Scotchman  sa3's,  "I  feel  a  smell." 

Turning  from  body  to  mind,  the  true  con- 
ception of  soul  leads  us  to  distrust  the  so- 
called  science  of  phrenology,  that  pigeon-holes 


THE    SEAMLESS   ROBE  I5I 

man's  brains  like  a  modern  postoffice.  The 
bumps  and  lines  within  which  certain  faculties 
are  supposed  to  act  represent  at  best  but  a 
small  side  of  the  truth.  Soul,  like  body,  has 
an  unquestioned  unity.  Strengthen  it  any- 
where, and  you  contribute  to  the  vitality  of  the 
whole.  The  solving  of  a  mathematical  prob- 
lem clears  my  brain  for  sermon  writing.  The 
musical  power  of  the  composer  is  heightened 
if  he  spend  a  part  of  his  time  in  the  labora- 
tory. Doctor  Holmes  writes  better  for  his  ex- 
perience in  the  dissecting-room.  Nature  must 
not  be  limited,  as  Wordsworth  reminds  us, 

"Not  only  in  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air; 
but  in  the  mind  of  man  there  is 

"A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

The  Conservation  and  Correlation  of  Force 
is  a  spiritual  as  well  as  a  material  truth. 
There  is  an  essential  unity  of  the  moralities, 
an  identity  of  the  virtues.  The  excellencies 
are  correlated.  Like  the  physical  phenomena, 
light,  heat  and  electricity,  courage,  truthfulness 


152  THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE 

and  humility  play  the  one  into  the  other. 
Says  Bartol,  "We  speak  of  cardinal  virtues, 
but  every  virtue  is  cardinal."  We  talk  too 
flippantly  about  "essentials"  in  morals.  There 
are  no  unimportant  things  in  conduct,  no  "non- 
essential" duties.  In  ethics  as  in  phrenology 
we  sacrifice  truth  to  clearness  when  we  tabu- 
late our  virtues,  and  speak  of  honesty,  gener- 
osity, temperance,  industry,  as  if  it  were  pos- 
sible to  realize  one  without  realizing  all.  The 
honest  man  has  a  keen  sense  of  the  value  of  a 
minute.  The  prompt  man  is  industrious,  the 
industrious  man  is  never  dissolute,  the  man 
that  is  never  late  at  an  engagement  is  pretty 
well  along  tov/ard  sainthood;  he  will  pay  his 
debts  ;  and  he  will  not  be  afraid  to  die  when 
the  time  comes. 

All  the  virtues  are  correlated.  True  valor 
on  the  battle-field  bespeaks  a  man  that  is 
tender  to  woman  and  gentle  to  children.  Giv- 
en an  absorbing  enthusiasm  in  any  direction, 
be  it  the  perfection  of  a  machine,  the  cata- 
loguing of  fishes,  the  accumulating  of  honora- 
ble wealth,  or  the  advancement  of  an  idea,  and 
you  have  a  moral    force    that    is    translatable 


THE    SEAMLESS   ROBE  I53 

into  all  the  virtues;  a  persistent  energy 
that  will  overreach  the  boundaries  of  one 
life;  like  the  induction  that  flashes  the  mes- 
sage of  one  telephone  wire  on  to  another,  it  is 
a  virtue  that  will  jump  from  soul  to  soul,  will 
pass  from  home  to  home,  from  generation  to 
generation. 

Some  years  ago  I  was  invited  to  call  upon 
a  young  man  in  one  of  our  western  towns, 
whose  body  was  already  made  transparent  by 
the  ravages  of  consumption.  His  voice  was 
nearly  all  gone,  he  could  speak  only  in  a 
whisper.  He  sat  propped  up  in  his  chair, 
working  diligently  at  a  catalogue  of  the  in- 
sects of  Colorado,  the  study  of  which  he  had 
made  while  an  invalid  exile.  He  was  anxious 
to  complete  his  task  before  the  final  orders 
came  that  would  muster  him  out  of  this  earth 
service.  He  had  no  time  for  foreboding  or  re- 
gret; there  were  no  shadows  in  the  room,  it 
was  filled  with  a  light  that  streamed  from  his 
earnest  eyes.  And  as  I  looked  more  closely 
I  found  that  he  was  scarcely  more  than  a  boy; 
yet  he  had  made  himself  an  authority  on  the 
insects  of  at  least  three  of  our  Western  States. 


154  THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE   - 

On  his  table  were  letters  from  men  eminent 
in  science  in  Europe  and  America,  anxious  to 
profit  by  the  observations  of  this  young  man 
who  was  dying  in  a  Western  town.  Soon  after 
my  visit  the  papers  announced  the  death  of 
the  young  scientist;  they  talked  of  a  "career 
cut  short,"  a  "loss  to  the  world,"  "disappoint- 
ment," and  so  on,  but,  sad  as  early  death  is, 
there  was  far  more  joy  than  sorrow  in  his  trans- 
lation, more  life  than  death  in  it  all.  What 
began  in  a  boyish  love  of  butterflies,  grew,  in 
twenty-five  or  six  years, — what  a  short  life! — 
into  a  virtue  that  was  transformed  into  the 
inquisitiveness  of  a  thousand  children  in  the 
neighboring  schools;  it  molded  the  better  am- 
bition of  his  city;  it  laid  the  foundations  of  an 
academy  of  science,  which  is  one  of  the  most 
creditable  and  best  known  of  the  kind  in  the 
west.  The  grave  had  no  victory  over  such  a 
life,  and  death  had  no  sting  to  J.  Duncan  Put- 
nam, the  young  and  lamented  scientist  of  Dav- 
enport, who  so  early  found  a  place  among  the 

"choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 
In  minds  made  better  by  their  presence;  live 


THE    SEAMLESS   ROBE  I55 

In  pulses  stirred  to  generosity, 

In  deeds  of  daring  rectitude,  in  scorn 

For  miserable  aims  that  end  in  self, 

In  thoughts  sublime  that  pierce  the  night  like  stars 

And  with  their  mild  persistence  urge  man's  search 

To  vaster  issues.         ****** 

*         *         This  is  life  to  come, 
Which  martyred  men  have  made  more  glorious 
For  us  who  strive  to  follow." 

If  Professor  Tyndall  is  right  in  speaking  of 
this  principle  of  "Conservation  and  Correlation 
of  Force"  as  the  most  important  scientific  dis- 
covery of  the  century,  is  not  the  spiritual  ap- 
plication of  it  quite  as  important  to  religion 
and  morals?     It  is  important  because — 

It  simplifies  the  problem  of  living. 

It  multiplies  the  encouragements  of  life. 

Let  us  attend  to  these  separately.  Many  of 
the  anxieties  of  conscience  cease  when  we 
fully  realize  that  doing  good  work  anywhere 
for  anything  is  weaving  the  seamless  robe  of 
character.  Cumbersome  codes  of  Egyptian 
laws  and  ancient  customs  were  condensed  into 
the  Ten  Commandments.  Jesus  reduced  these 
ten  into  the  one  commandment  of  love.  Rabbi 
Hillel,  who  was  an  old    man  when    Jesus  was 


156  THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE 

a  babe,  when  asked  by  a  disciple  if  lie  could 
state  the  whole  law  while  standing  on  one 
foot,  said,  "Yes,  thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor 
as  thyself."  A  pupil  asked  Confucius  if  the 
whole  law  of  virtue  could  be  stated  in  one 
word;  he  promptly  replied,  "Reciprocity!"  — 
The  golden  rule  in  five  syllables  stated  three 
hundred  and  fifty  years  before  it  was  pro- 
nounced by  the  persuasive  lips  of  the  Naza- 
rene  !  Under  this  law  of  unity,  problems  of 
salvation  and  patriotism  are  identical.  One's 
duty  to  self,  home  and  race  are  inseparable. 
Be  a  good  workman  and  you  are  a  good  citi- 
zen. Be  a  good  citizen  and  you  are  fitting 
yourself  for  heaven.  "Be  just  before  you  are 
generous,"  is  a  favorite  maxim  with  business 
men;  but  like  many  another  shrewd  Yankee 
saying  it  contains  a  large  fallacy.  Cease  tear- 
ing the  seamless  robe.  There  is  no  generosity 
that  is  not  grounded  in  justice,  and  certainly 
you  cannot  be  just  without  being  generous. 
The  theologians  have  had  a  hard  time  of  it 
in  trying  to  reconcile  infinite  justice  with  in- 
finite love.  In  their  trouble  they  missed  the 
correlation;  no    more    intimately    wedded    are 


THE    SEAMLESS   ROBE  1 57 

light  and  heat  in  the  economy  of  the  universal 
than  are  justice  and  love. 

"All  of  God  is  in  every  particle  of  matter," 
said  the  old  philosopher.  So  all  of  goodness 
is  in  every  duty.  "Let  thy  whole  strength  go 
to  each.  "  Believe  in  the  lesson  of  the  seam- 
less Robe,  and  religion  becomes  to  you  a  city 
like  ancient  Thebes  with  an  hundred  gates, 
through  any  one  of  which  you  may  enter.  "All 
roads  lead  to  Rome,"  was  the  old  saying.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  heaven,  if  only  the  road 
be  such  as  duty  travels  upon. 

"How  shall  I  be  saved?"  Not  by  creed  or 
vicarious  rite,  but  by  doing  well  your  simplest 
duty,  attending  to  the  nearest  call.  Rubenstein 
used  to  say,  "I  make  my  prayers  at  the  piano." 
Agassiz  dedicated  "Penikese"  to  the  study  of 
nature  by  bowing  his  head  in  wordless  prayer. 
The  books  say  that  Angelo's  face  grew  radiant 
as  the  marble  chips  flew  from  his  chisel.  Each 
of  the  three  divisions  of  Dante's  immortal 
poem  ends  with  the  word  "stars."  Through 
the  agonies  of  thought  and  the  frenzy  of  po- 
etic imagination  did  he  win  the  celestial  vi- 
sion.    These  stories  are  illustrations    of  high 


158  THE    SEAMLESS    ROBE 

piety,  because  any  virtue  is  linked  to  all  the 
virtues,  and  every  excellency  is  a  part  of  the 
great  excellent. 

I  have  already  anticipated  the  second  point. 
This  simplicity  brings  cheer.  This  linking  of 
the  virtues  encourages  us.  We  are  glad  to 
take  the  task  Providence  places  upon  our  door- 
step this  morning.  Science  interprets  the  gos- 
pel,— the  good  news  of  Jesus.  It  says  to  the  as- 
tronomer, "Watch  your  stars;  " — to  the  farmer, 
"Hold  steady  your  plough;" — to  the  black- 
smith, "Believe  in  your  forge;" — to  the  house 
wife,  "Glorify  your  needle,  look  well  to  your 
oven  and  attend  to  the  babies."  To  one  and 
all  it  says,  "Pour  generously  the  water  of  your 
life  into  any  or  all  of  these  runlets  and  they 
will  combine  into  brooks;  the  brooks  will  find 
the  river,  and  the  rivers  all  flow  oceanward. 
Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  unto  one  of  the  least 
of  these,  ye  have  done  it  unto  me.'" 

In  Eighteen  Hundred  and  Sixty-One  the 
north  sent  her  boys  to  the  battle  front  on  the 
southern  fields,  where  many  of  them,  pressed  by 
danger,  won  the  apotheosis  of  character.  Some 
time  afterward  it  sent  down  another  lot  of  men 


THE    SEAMLESS    ROBE  I59 

in  the  name  of  Christianity,  to  scatter  tracts, 
to  pray  for  and  superintend  the  religious  in- 
terests of  these  boys.  Some  of  these  latter  men 
were  the  callow  fledglings  of  the  divinity 
school, — wanting  in  the  courage  to  stand  where 
brave  men  in  those  days  should  stand,  if  higher 
duties  did  not  prevent.  I  have  seen  cowards 
with  shameless  impudence  undertake  to  teach 
heroes  religion  ;  nerveless  drones  talking  piety 
to  those  who  every  day  carried  their  lives  in 
their  hands  for  an  idea.  There  was  more  sav- 
ing virtue  and  heavenly  grace  in  the  self-con- 
trol that  kept  vigilant  the  tired  boy  on  his  mid- 
night watch,  than  in  a  carload  of  this  poorer 
kind  of  Christian  Commission  men  that  flocked 
to  the 

"Field  that  was  farthest  from  danger," 

with  their  haversacks  crammed  with  the  publi- 
cations of  the  American  Tract  Society.  The 
sentinel  was  developing  a  virtue  that  stopped 
not  with  the  surrender  of  Robert  E.  Lee.  It 
went  on  to  conquer  the  prairies  of  Kansas  and 
Dakota,  and  to  touch  with  intelligence  the 
wild  canons  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  The 
valor  of  the  field    appeared  again    in  generous 


l6o  THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE 

forbearance  toward  a  fallen  foe.  The  mothers 
that  kept  back  the  tears  that  might  discourage, 
the  girls  who  wrote  the  tear-stained  pages  full 
of  laughter  that  the  camp  might  be  less  irk- 
some, were  unintentionally  making  contribu- 
tions to  the  centennial  glories  that  came  later. 
Slowly  but  surely  is  this  doctrine  of  the  Seam- 
less Robe  investing  consciously  all  sections  of 
society.  Some  years  ago  I  heard  this  doctrine 
quaintly  but  forcibly  urged  in  the  legislature 
of  Indiana.  An  appropriation  toward  building 
a  belt  railway  around  the  Capital  city  was  un- 
der discussion.  A  representative  from  one  of 
the  rural  counties  of  the  state,  somewhat  noted 
for  its  oratory,  had  the  floor.  After  consid- 
ering the  commercial  importance  of  the  scheme, 
v/axing  warm  he  met  the  argument  of  the  op- 
position that  it  was  a  local  interest,  conse- 
quently not  a  matter  for  state  patronage,  as 
follows: 

"Gentlemen.  I  represent  Jackson  County,  a  great  way 
from  the  city  of  Indianopolis,  but  I  support  this  'yer  bill, 
for  I  maintain  that  it  makes  no  difference  whether  you  live 
on  the  waist-band  or  way  down  in  the  pocket,  it  all  goes  the 
same  to  the  strength  and  glory  of  the  pantaloons,  you  can't 
holp  Indianopolis  without  holpin^  Jackson   County:   it  all 


THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE  l6l 

goes  to  the  holp  of   the   great   state  of   Ingianer,    the  third 
agricult'rul  state  in  the  Union." 

Judging  from  the  current  discussions  in  re- 
ligious conferences,!  suspect  that  there  is  many 
an  accomplished  Doctor  of  Divinity  in  this 
country  who  fails  to  see  as  clearly  or  state  as 
tersely  the  doctrine  of  the  Seamless  Robe  that 
invests  humanity,  as  this  legislator.  Be  hon- 
est,  then,  be  loyal;  above  all  be  sensible  and 
loving,  for  these  contribute  to  the  glory  of 
earth  and  the  peace  of  heaven. 

Let  us  study  the  other  side  of  this  law  of 
morals.  The  vices  of  life  are  interchangeable,as 
well  as  its  virtues;  sins  are  transmittable  as  well 
as  graces.  Moral  bluntness  in  one  thing  dulls 
the  conscience  in  all  directions.  One  perver- 
sity renders  the  soul  callous  to  many  evils. 
The  vices  are  all  of  a  family, — children  of  the 
same  parentage.  Every  sin  in  the  calendar  is  a 
burning  jet  of  vicious  gas,  flowing  through 
under-ground  channels  from  the  same  retort 
which  supplies  the  baneful  fluid  that  burns 
in  other  and  distant  jets.  Here  as  elsewhere 
it  is  dangerous    business  to    classify.      Nature 


l62  THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE 

is  slow  to  recognize  lines.  We  must  remem- 
ber that  all  vice  is  vicious  and  that  every  sin 
is  sinful.  Let  us  talk  plainly.  When  I  speak 
of  the  sins  of  dishonesty  and  theft,  hearers 
are  thoughtful;  but  if  at  the  same  time  I  speak 
of  the  sins  of  tardiness,  procrastination  and 
loafing,  they  smile  and  think  I  have  made  a 
"good  point;" — as  if  these  were  not  vices  more 
nearly  related  than  electricity  and  magnetism; 
as  if  he  who  goes  through  life  tardily  does  not 
go  through  life  dishonestly.  He  robs  his  fel- 
low-beings of  the  most  valuable  commodity 
God  entrusts  to  his  care, — time;  so  valuable 
is  time  that  God  gives  but  a  moment  of  it  at 
once  and  never  gives  that  moment  but  once 
in  all  eternity.  Again,  when  I  talk  of  har- 
lotry, women  hang  their  heads  in  thoughtful 
shame,  but  when  I  speak  of  extravagance  in 
dress,  a  vulgar  love  of  display,  a  wicked  sac- 
rifice to  fashion,  a  desire  to  merit  the  social 
rank  in  which  character  does  not  form  the 
chief  test,  people  smile  and  think  the  preacher 
is  riding  his  hobby,- — although  it  is  a  matter 
of  scientific  demonstration  that  these  latter 
vices  are  being  daily  transmuted  into  the  former 


THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE  163 

as  directly  as  motion  is  converted  into  heat  or 
the  solar  ray  into  vital  energy.  That  the  hab- 
itual use  of  intoxicants  is  a  sin  against  the 
physical  and  social  economies  of  life  is  gen- 
erally admitted  in  these  days;  but  when,  backed 
by  the  most  deliberate  science,  it  is  urged  that 
the  habitual  use  of  tobacco  is  a  sin  against 
the  body  and  society,  even  women  smile  as 
though  it  were  "another  hit,"  and  if  I  under- 
take to  seriously  apply  the  simplest  principles 
of  morality  to  the  affairs  of  the  oven  and  the 
kettle,  to  apply  the  commonplaces  of  physio- 
logical science  established  beyond  a  doubt,  as 
any  intelligent  physician  will  tell  you,  the 
smile  becomes  a  laugh.  We  are  shocked  and 
alarmed  when  the  laws  against  careless  use  of 
gunpowder  are  violated  and  lives  and  property 
endangered  thereby,  but  wives  introduce  into 
their  drawing-rooms,  mothers  carry  on  their 
side-boards,  even  churches  make  sacramental 
uses  of  that  which  carries  greater  social  dan- 
gers, and  which  is  a  thousand  times  more  de- 
structive of  life  and  property  than  gunpowder 
and  all  its  kindred  explosives. 

All  this  proves  that  we  do  not  yet  adequately 


164  THE    SEAMLESS    ROBE 

understand  the  sermon  of  the  Seamless  Robe. 
We  do  not  sufficiently  realize  the  correlation 
of  the  vices  and  the  conservation  of  evil.  We 
need  more  clear  thinking.  A  stronger  intel- 
lectual grasp  of  this  law  alone  will  bring  finer 
moral  sensibilities.  People  trifle  only  with 
what  they  consider  trivial.  These  things  men- 
tioned disconnectedly  may  be  trifling,  but  the 
connection  is  certain,  God  is  persistent  and 
omnipresent.  Science  is  more  successful  than 
religion  in  enforcing  this  lesson  of  the  Seamless 
Robe.  The  Rip  Van  Winkle  "we  won*  t-count- 
this-once"  cannot  ease  the  enlightened  con- 
science; every  "once"  is  counted  by  nature's 
detective.  Every  violence  is  recorded;  every 
shock  to  love  bargains  for  hate  somewhere. 

It  requires  a  scientific  test  less  delicate  to 
demonstrate  the  inevitable  connection  between 
domestic  extravagance  and  forgery,  bad  cookery 
and  inebriety,  than  is  necessary  to  prove  the 
relations  between  electric  currents  and  the  cir- 
culation of  the  blood. 

I  have  said  that  the  virtues  of  war  were 
transmitted  into  the  graces  of  peace,  but  the 
dissipations  of  camp    were    also    perpetuated. 


THE    SEAMLESS    ROBE  165 

The  old  demon  of  slavery  changed  its  name 
and  reappeared  in  political  corruption;  it 
mounted  the  stump  and  dealt  in  partisan 
swagger,  in  the  venom  of  party  hatred  and  sec- 
tional prejudice.  The  jay-hawking  of  the  march 
ripened  into  plunder  of  public  funds  for  private 
ends,  the  shameless  appropriation  of  national 
domain  to  personal  gains. 

"Out  of  evil,  evil  flourishes, 
Out  of  tyranny,  tyranny  buds." 

He  who  suppresses  his  conscience  just  a 
little,  enough  to  take  the  road  of  expediency 
into  the  citadel  of  success,  has  taken  the  left- 
hand  road  that  leads  direct  to  all  the  miseries. 
The  woman  who  expects  to  atone  for  a  flippant 
word  by  subsequent  grace,  has  been  flirting 
with  all  the  disgraces.  "Take  home  one  of 
Satan's  relations,  and  the  whole  family  will 
follow,"  is  an  old  proverb  that  fits  into  the 
new  science.  When  the  correlation  of  moral 
forces  is  better  understood,  we  shall  have 
fewer  gluttons  preaching  temperance;  fewer 
dyspeptics  urging  moderation;  fewer  gossips 
insisting  on  charity,   less  bigotry  mistaken  for 


l66  THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE 

piety,  and  fear  of  hell  will  be  less  often  taken 
for  religion. 

The  boldest  synthesis  is  yet  to  be  made. 
The  final  thing  to  be  said  is  that  in  the  spir- 
itual life  there  are  not  two  seamless  robes, 
but  one.  I  may  have  seemed  to  assume  a  line 
where  no  line  finally  remains:  not  only  are  the 
virtues  correlated,  and  the  vices  interchange- 
able, but  the  vices  and  the  virtues  are  invested 
with  the  same  seamless  robe.  There  is  a  law 
for  lawlessness.  Sin  is  no  abnormal  cloud 
thrown  in  between  man  and  God  by  some  reg- 
nant devil.  What  is  it,  then?  Now  it  is 
weakness,  deficiency  of  force;  it  is  darkness, 
the  absence  of  light ;  it  is  cold,  the  absence  of 
heat.  Again,  it  is  misdirected  energy:  it  is 
fire  on  the  housetop,  and  not  on  the  hearth; 
it  is  the  river  overflowing  its  banks ;  it  is  un- 
disciplined power.  "Good  in  the  making," 
says  Emerson.  "That  rough  movement  toward 
the  good  which  we  call  evil,"  is  Leigh  Hunt's 
phrase.  The  forces  that  tend  even  to  sin  are 
sacred  forces.  Shall  we  not  heroically  labor 
for  the  control    of  the    horse    upon    which  we 


THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE  167 

are  to  ride  into  strength  and  glory?  Welcome 
the  awful  rapids.  Welcome  the  Thousand 
Isles  and  the  terrible  dangers  therefrom..  Give 
me  that  tremendous  responsibility  which  com- 
pels me  to  steer  so  near  disaster  that  I  may 
thereby  sail  the  St.  Lawrence  of  life,  and 
find  at  last  the  vastness  of  the  ocean.  We  will 
seek  not  to  imprison,  but  to  liberate  energy. 
We  will  not  try  to  grow  our  oak  in  a  flower- 
pot, but  will  plant  our  acorn  in  the  middle  of 
the  field.  Religion  has  no  more  use  for  a 
broken  spirit  than  a  general  has  for  a  jaded 
horse.  Better  a  sinning  Saul  of  Tarsus  than 
a  sinless  Nicodemus.  Better  a  wayward  Loyola 
than  a  submissive  Simon  Stylites,  as  the  se- 
quel of  their  lives  proves.  Better  a  fiery  France 
than  a  quiescent  Italy.  Not  too  much  pride, 
but  too  little ;  not  too  much  '  freedom,  but  too 
little;  not  too  much  love  of  life  and  the  good 
it  contains  have  we,  but  too  little.  By  direct- 
ing, not  suppressing,  the  forces  within  us, 
shall  we  realize  and  apply  the  gospel  of  the 
Seamless  Robe. 

"The  Seamless    Robe!" — ever   suggestive  in 
its  symbolism,  first,  of  the    inclusive   spirit  of 


l68  THE   SEAMLESS   ROBE 

the  Master  who  wore  it;  less  mindful  of  its 
value  than  the  Roman  soldiers,  the  sects  have 
torn  the  Christian  unity  that  ought  to  be  based 
upon  his  words  and  life.  Again,  it  symbolizes 
the  still  larger  unity  of  Universal  Religion, — 
that  golden  cord  that  binds  all  humanity  around 
the  feet  of  God,  and  of  v/hich  Christianity  is 
but  one  strand,  albeit  the  best,  because  it  is 
the  tenderest,  the  strongest  because  it  is 
the  most  silken.  And  it  may  symbolize 
the  continuous  existence,  the  endless  life,  a  robe 
woven  from  the  threads  of  time  and  eternity. 
This  time  let  it  stay  with  us,  as  a  symbol  of 
the  highest  truth,  the  inclusive  unity,  the  uni- 
verse,  the  universality  of  law,  the  indivisible 
and  eternal  God.  Blessed  be  science  for  its 
enforcement  of  this  lesson.  Above  the  voice 
of  prophets  do  we  hear  its  tones  saying: 

"Whosoever  shall  break  the  least  of  these  commandments 
and  teach  men  to  do  so,  shall  be  called  least  in  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven;  but  he  that  is  faithful  in  that  which  is  least,  is 
faithful  in  that  which  is  much," 

Realizing  this,  duty  becomes  the  Seamless 
Robe.  It  becomes  the  unbroken  and  imperish- 
able will  of  God,  and  life  is  given  us  to  weave 


THE    SEAMLESS    ROBE  lb9 

this  coat    without  seam  by  filling  all  our  days 
with    faithfulness,  and  our  years  with  loyalty. 

'  'All  service  ranks  the  same  with  God. 
If  now,  as  formerly,  he  trod 
Paradise,  His  presence  fills 
Our  earth. 

******** 

"Say  not  'a  small  event!"  why  small? 
Costs  it  more  pain  that  this  ye  call 
A  'great  event"  should  come  to  pass, 
Than  that?     Untwine  me  from  the  mass 
Of  deeds  which  make  up  life,  one  deed 
Power  shall  fall  short  in,  or  exceed!" 


WRESTLING  AND  BLESSING 

A  fossil  lies  before  me  on  the  table  where  I 
write, — a  little  trilobite,  that  serves  now  for  a 
paper-weight.  There  he  lies  just  as  he  stopped 
in  his  last  crawl  or  swim  some  million  years 
ago, the  body  half-bent, the  stony  eyes  still  star- 
ing! One  can  not  help  wondering  what  stopped 
him,  how  it  happened,  and  what  else  had  hap- 
pened in  that  far-off  life  when  those  black  rings 
were  supple  and  the  eyes  saw,  I  wish  I  knew 
his  story.  You  have  the  Venus  of  Milo,  per- 
haps, on  the  bracket  in  your  parlor, — that  proud 
marble  beauty,  whose  mystery  her  keepers  in 
the  Louvre  have  in  these  latter  years  been  try- 
ing to  guess  anew.  It  would  be  pleasant  if 
we  had  some  record  how  she  came  under 
"that  little  Melian  farm,"  from  whose  fur- 
rows she  was  unburied,  so  blurred  with  stain 
and  maimed  and  aged,  but  able  still  to  make 
men  mute  with  delight.  We  wish  we  knew  who 
170 


WRESTLING   AND   BLESSING  I7I 

felt  the  first  delight  of  her,  when  she  was 
young;  who  gave  her  early  praise;  in  whose 
workshop  she  grew  to  such  majesty  of  form. 
Somewhat  so  is  it  with  the  old  legends  in 
our  Bible.  We  wish  we  knew  how,  when, 
where,  by  whom,  they  came  into  existence. 
There  are  a  hundred  of  them,  some  beautiful, 
some  uncouth,  some  villainous  in  look.  Now 
they  lie  fossilized  in  myths, — mysterious  frag- 
ments, like  old  statues.  Once  they  were  liv- 
ing and  moving;  once  they  were  coming  into 
being  as  beliefs.  These  stories  have  had  a 
life-history  in  men's  minds  and  hearts.  Take 
the  Jacob  story  (Gen.  xxxii.  24-31),  v/here 
Jacob  wrestles  through  the  lonely  night  with 
the  angel.  To  trace  its  origin  we  should 
have  to  go  back  to  very  ancient  times,  when 
men  were  on  right  familiar  terms  with  Deity, 
and  when  the  Hebrews  still  had  many  gods, 
and  Jehovah,  not  yet  the  One,  was  but  the 
Arch-Power  who  helped  their  tribe.  What 
the  beginning  of  this  special  story  may  have 
been,  probably  no  one  will  ever  tell  except  in 
guesses.  Possibly  a  dim,  misshaped  tradition 
of  some  actual  event  lies     hidden  in  it.      Per- 


172  WRESTLING  AND   BLESSING 

haps,  like  similar  Scandinavian  stories  of  the 
giants  challenging  the  god  Thor,  it  had  a  long 
pre-existent  saga-life  from  mouth  to  mouth, 
before  it  reached  a  record.  Its  origin  may 
have  been  an  early  bard's  attempt  to  account 
for  the  people's  name  of  "Israel, "  "Prince  with 
God,"  by  fathering  it  on  a  brave  deed  of  some 
ancestor.  But  whatever  its  source,  to  trace  it 
we  would  have  to  leave  the  mental  climate  of 
to-day,  and,  turning  back,  re-enter  an  at- 
mosphere where  the  faith  of  the  people  crys- 
tallized itself  in  legends  of  the  supernatural 
as  naturally  as  the  January  mist  deposits  itself 
in  snow-flakes. 

Such  legends  rise  in  many  ways.  We  find 
their  relics  strewing  the  beginnings  of  all  lit- 
eratures, embedded  in  all  old  faiths.  And  this 
Bible  of  ours  would  be  the  rock  without  the 
fossils,  would  be  that  Melian  farm  without  the 
statue,  if  it  did  not  hold  these  things.  The 
trilobite  is  no  sacred  beetle  to  us;  but  I  re- 
gard mine  with  some  awe, — it  is  so  much  older 
than  I!  We  do  not  worship  the  Venus;  but 
she  is  a  joy  forever  in  America  as  in  old  Greece. 
Let  us  use  old  Bibles  in  the  same  way,  bring- 


WRESTLING   AND   BLESSING  1 73 

ing  that  kind  of  reverence,  and  none  other, 
that  each  thing  in  them  deserves  from  to-day. 
Let  their  beautiful  things  be  beautiful,  let 
their  wicked  things  be  wicked,  let  the  curi- 
ous things  be  curious,  and  the  true  things,  the 
grand  things,  be  true  and  grand.  The  book 
is  but  the  rock  or  the  farm;  what  lies  in  it 
gives  the  worth.  And,  as  a  whole,  the  worth 
of  this,  our  Bible,  is  very  great.  Much  be- 
sides the  fossils  and  the  fragments  lies  there- 
in. Even  they,  when  they  no  longer  are  be- 
lieved as  fact,  serve  still  as  poetry,  supply- 
ing hints  and  emblems  for  the  spiritual  experi- 
ence,— as  with  the  very  exariiple  cited,  the 
wrestling  that  brought  blessing.  What  exhales 
and  vanishes  as  Scripture  floats  far  and  wide 
as  hymn, — like  that  other  Jacob  story  now  sung 
in  the  "Nearer,  my  God,  to  thee."  What  falls 
from  belief  as  story  of  Jacob  or  of  Jesus,  be- 
gins to  fill  a  still  higher,  wider  place  to  us  as 
history  of  the  human  mind  in  some  old  atti- 
tude of  worship. 

The  gist  of  our  Jacob  legend  is  simply  this  : 
Jacob  wrestles  through  the  lonely  night  with 
a  strange,  strong  Power,  that  maims  him  ;  but, 


174  WRESTLING   AND   BLESSING 

instead  of  yielding,  he  clings  and  wrestles  on, 
and  ivill  not  let  go  wrestlings  until  he  has  ex- 
torted a  blessing  from  his  hurter.  And  when, 
in  turn,  he  asks  the  stranger's  name,  no  name 
is  given  him;  but  Jacob  guesses  it  is  his  God, 
and  calls  that  night's  struggling-place,  "God's 
Face."  And  he  limps  off  in  the  morning  lame 
in  his  thigh,  but  a  crowned  victor;  and  for 
his  prowess  wins  a  new  name,  "Israel,"  or 
"Prince  with  God." 

Here  we  have  something  very  fine, — a  mean- 
ing universal,  and  fresh  as  yesterday's  strug- 
gle with  our  own  life's  difficulty.  The  teach- 
ing is  that  Wrestling  is  the  condition  of  Bless- 
ing,— that  the  long,  determined  clinch  brings 
coronation,  and  makes  a  new  man  of  us, — 
maimed,  perhaps,  but  still  a  nobler  and 
stronger  man  than  before  the  struggle. 

A  most  aged  doctrine?  Yes:  all  the  old 
religions  ring  with  it.  Most  common-place? 
True:  the  elements  of  heroism  are  very  com- 
mon-place. Those  short  two  worded  sentences 
from  Paul  (2  Cor.  vi.  4-10;  iv.  8,  9,  16-18), 
that  sound  like  leaping  bugle-calls  from  one 
in  the  front,  are    just  it, — this    aged    doctrine 


WRESTLING  AND   BLESSING  175 

about  Struggle.  Half  the  chapters  of  Epictetus 
are  battle-music  on  this  one  theme.  But  be- 
cause each  one  has  to  find  out  for  himself  how 
true  the  doctrine  is,  and  has  to  find  it  out  a 
great  many  times  before  the  faith  becomes  as 
much  a  part  of  him  as  it  is  good  to  have  it, 
let  us  draw  it  out  and  say  it  over  once    again. 

How  do  we  treat  our  difficulties?  That  is 
the  question  that  has  no  second.  It  stands 
all  by  itself  in  its  importance.  The  answer 
to  it  gives  our  destiny.  How  do  we  treat  our 
difficulties?  Do  we  take  their  maiming  only, 
or  do  we  win  their  blessing  too?  The  question 
that  has  no  second. 

Difficul//>j-,  not  difficulty.  They  are  many, 
and  of  different  kinds,  although  their  hurt  in 
essence  is  the  same,  and  their  gift  in  essence 
is  the  same. 

I.  First  of  all  rises  up  that  difficulty  known 
as  the  l7iherited  Burden.  You  probably  have 
one.  A  dull  brain  perhaps,  or  some  weak 
organ  in  your  body,  or  the  outlaw  passion  in 
your  temperament,  the  brute  in  the  family 
blood  that  ought  to   have  been    tamed    by  the 


176  WRESTLING   AND   BLESSING 

grandfathers.  We  will  not  complain;  but  who 
would  not  have  made  liimself  a  little  brighter, 
had  his  opinion  been  asked  at  the  right  time? 
How  many  of  us,  forty  years  old,  but  have 
ached  in  the  same  spot  where  our  mothers 
ached,  and  because  they  did,  and  been  able 
from  that  ache  to  predict  afar  off  which  of  the 
wheels  of  life  will  perhaps  stop  first  and  stop 
all  the  rest?  And  who  can  help  sometimes 
charging  the  hardness  of  his  life-struggle,  or 
his  failure  in  the  struggle^to  those  two  persons 
in  the  world  whom  he  loves  dearest? 

We  will  not  complain,  I  say;  but  it  is  get- 
ting easier  every  day  to  complain  weakly  of 
this  burden  and  yield  to  it  in  miserable  self- 
surrender,  because  we  are  just  finding  out,  by 
the  help  of  the  doctors  and  physiologists  and 
the  new  philosophy  of  organic  nature,  how 
much  we  may  in  perfect  honesty  attribute  to 
it.  The  old  dogma  said  that  we  inherited  our 
sin,  and  that  all  our  woe  was  brought  into  the 
world  with  that  garden-sin  in  Eden;  and  this 
dogma  was  a  dim  hint  of  the  great  fact  recog- 
nized by  our  evolution  doctrine  of  to-day. 
But,  after  all,  that  gardener  was    so  far    away 


WRESTLING   AND   BLESSING  I77 

that  we  could  not  practically  reach  him  to  lay 
our  personal  responsibility  off  upon  his  shoul- 
ders. To-day  we  are  learning  to  see  right  in 
our  homes  our  Adam  and  our  Eve,  who  have 
actually  inlaid  our  body,  mind  and  tastes  with 
their  bequests!  And  as  this  knowledge  grows, 
weak  hearts  are  likely  enough  to  abate  their 
trying,  because  (they  say  to  themselves),  ''He 
and  she  are  to  blame,  not  I."  And  one  effect 
of  our  evolution  theory  may  be  to  make  more 
cowards  and  renegades  in  life. 

Weak  hearts  and  renegades,  indeed!  As  if 
the  knowledge  did  not  teach  this  rather, — that, 
if  the  responsibility  be  less,  the  fate  is  even 
stronger  than  we  thought,  and  needs  the  stouter 
wrestle;  and  this,  too, — that,  if  in  oneway  the 
responsibility  be  less,  it  is  greatening  in  two 
other  ways.  Knowing  the  tendencies  received 
from  father  and  mother,  we  know  the  special 
dangers  that  are  threatening  in  our  natures, 
and  therefore  what  we  mainly  have  to  guard 
against.  Again, to-day  we  knowingly,  no  longer 
unknowingly,  transmit  our  influence  to  our 
children, — and  men  and  women  awake  to  suffer- 
ing they  inflict  are  doubly  holden  for  it.   This 


178  WRESTLING   AND    BLESSING 

new  emphasis  upon  inheritance,  truly  under- 
stood, is  both  comforting  and  spurring.  Com- 
forting, for  to  those  v/ho  mourn  over-much  at 
what  they  see  in  their  little  ones,  thinking  it 
all  their  personal  bequest,  it  says:  "You  are 
responsible  only  for  the  half  or  the  quarter  part 
of  this:  for  the  whole  ancestry  has  been  counted 
into  you,  and  through  you  reaches  yours." 
A  comfort  that,  when,  after  all  our  trying,  our 
boy  turns  out  badly,  or  our  daughter  dies 
young  after  suffering  six  years.  And  the  new 
knowledge  spurs,  because  it  says  to  parents, 
"For  part  of  your  children's  birth-fate  you  are 
responsible,  since  by  patient  energy  your  dull 
brain  can  be  a  little  quickened,your  blood  can 
purify  itself,  your  body  can  make  its  weak 
places  somewhat  stronger,  and,  above  all, 
your  unbalanced  temperament  can  be  controlled 
and  trained  and  much  ennobled;  and  if  you 
make  these  self-improvements  firmly  yours, 
they  may  be  largely  handed  on  to  thefn. " 
That  we  are  not  fit  to  have  our  children,  un- 
less we  have  trained  ourselves  beforehand  for 
their  birth,  is  what  our  new  evolution  doctrine 
says  to  us;   and  thereby    it  will    gradually  be- 


WRESTLING   AND   BLESSING  I79 

come  a  great   uplifting    and    salvation  to    the 
race. 

The  earnest  wrestler,  knowing  all  this,  will 
never  wholly  surrender  to  the  poorness  of  his 
brain  or  his  body  or  his  temperament.  Not 
to  poorness  of  the  brain:  for  that  dull  head 
that  we  inherit  may  go  with  days  that  shall 
leave  us  perfect  in  self-respect,  although  dull- 
headed  No  sight  is  more  impressive  than 
that  of  humble  self-respecting  workers,  boys 
or  girls,  or  men  or  women,  who,  day  in,  day 
out,  do  their  duty  in  the  quiet  stations  where 
small  talent  hides  them,  representing  the  Moral 
Law  incarnate  in  their  little  corners.  Not 
to  the  poorness  of  one's  body:  what  sight  more 
beautiful  than  the  patience,  the  self-forgetful- 
ness,  the  wide  and  eager  pity  for  others'  trou- 
ble, which  suffering  sometimes  generates  in 
the  life-long  sufferer  who  bears  her  weakness 
greatly,  although  in  other  ways  her  service  has 
to  be  the  service  of  those  who  cannot  even 
"stand,"  but  have  to  lie,  "and  wait"?  Who  has 
not  known  or  heard  of  some  mighty  invalid  who 
found  sphere  and  mission-field  on  a  sick  bed? 

Not  even  to  the  poorness    of  one's    tempera- 


l8o  WRESTLING  AND  BLESSING 

ment  will  the  earnest  wrestler  yield.  There  is 
one  example  in  the  world  more  touching  and 
inspiring  even  than  these  last.  It  is  that  of  a 
man  wrestling  hard  with  his  inherited  burden 
when  it  takes  the  form  of  a  Besetting  Sin, — 
which  is  very  apt  to  be  that  brute  in  the  family 
blood.  But  even  if  it  be  a  devil  of  his  own 
wanton  raising,  we  watch  him,  we  cheer  him, 
we  tell  him  we  know  all  about  it,  and  that  he 
is  doing  nobly,  and  helping  us  in  our  struggle ; 
we  pity  him,  if  he  falls;  we  reverence  him  as 
holy,  if  he  wins.  Let  such  a  struggler  know 
that  we  know  he  is  the  hardest  fighter  of  us 
all.  And  if  he  wins,  his  besetting  temptation 
actually  turns  into  his  guardian  angel,  and 
blesses  him  through  life.  Our  besetting  sin 
7tiay  beco77ie  our  guardia?i  aftgel — let  us  dare 
to  say  it!  Let  us  thank  God  that  we  can  say 
it!  This  sin  that  has  sent  me  weary-hearted 
to  bed,  and  desperate  in  heart  to  morning 
work,  that  has  made  my  plans  miscarry  until 
I  am  a  coward,  that  cuts  me  off  from  prayer, 
thkt  robs  the  sky  of  blueness,  and  the  earth  of 
spring-time,  and  the  air  of  freshness,  and  hu- 
man faces  of  friendliness, — this  blasting  sin  that 


WRESTLING  AND   BLESSING  l8l 

has  made  my  bed  in  hell  for  me  so  long, — 
this  can  be  co7iquered.  I  do  not  say  annihi- 
lated, but — better  than  that — conquered,  cap- 
tured, and  transfigured  into  2,  friend:  so  that  I 
at  last  shall  say,  *'My  temptation  has  become 
my  strength!  for  to  the  very  fight  with  it  I  owe 
my  force."  We  can  treat  it  as  the  old  Romans 
treated  the  Barbarians  on  their  frontiers, — turn 
the  border-ruffians  within  ourselves  into  bor- 
der-guards. 

Am  I  speaking  too  confidently?  But  men 
have  done  this  very  thing,  and  why  not  you 
and  I?  Who  has  not  his  besetting  sin  to  be 
transfigured  thus?  But  it  will  take  the  firmest 
will  we  have,  the  clearest  aim,  the  steadiest 
purpose.  It  must  be  for  the  most  part  a  lonely 
Jacob-struggle.  The  night  will  certainly  seem 
long.  And  yet,  in  our  clinch,  the  day  may 
dawn  before  we  think  it,  and  we  shall  have 
won  the  benediction  and  earned  the  name  of 
"Israel,"  "Prince  with  God,"  and  learned  that 
even  besetting  temptation  may  be  "God's 
Face," — but  that  wrestlings  and  wrestling  only, 
is  the  condition  of  such  blessing. 

2.     These  are  forms  of    that  main  difficulty 


l82  WRESTLING  AND  BLESSING 

called  the  "Inherited  Burden."  There  are 
others  close  akin,  called  by  the  general  name 
"Hard  Lot."  "Hard  Lot," — again  the  very 
name  is  a  challenge  to  our  sleeping  powers. 
The  hard  lot  called  Poverty,  Ignorance,  Nar- 
row Conditions,  Accidents,  is  waiting  to  give 
us,  after  the  struggle.  Temperance,  Diligence, 
Fortitude,  Concentration.  But  after  the  strug- 
gle; that  is,  as  we  wrestle  with  those  condi- 
tions, these  elemental  powers  are  waked  in  us 
and  slowly  trained,  and  at  last  are  left  ours, — 
our  instruments  by  which  to  carve  out  life's 
success  and  happiness. 

A  boy  in  the  town  has  no  chance  for  educa- 
tion like  the  boys  of  richer  fathers  in  the  neigh- 
borhood,— no  college,  or  high  school  even;  or 
the  yearning  for  education  has  come  after  the 
school-days  are  over.  Will  that  boy,  like  Theo- 
dore Parker,  the  farmer's  son  in  Lexington, turn 
the  pasture  huckleberries  into  a  Latin  Diction- 
ary? or  like  Chambers,  the  great  Edinburgh 
publisher,  will  he  learn  his  French  and  science 
in  the  lonely  attic,  after  the  fourteen  hours' 
work  at  the  shop  are  done?  Will  he,  like 
Professor  Tyndall,  rise  every  morning,  for  fif- 


WRESTLING  AND  BLESSING  183 

teen  years,  and  be  at  his  books  by  five  o'clock? 
A  girl  in  the  town  seeks  for  a  "one-thing-to- 
do"  to  save  herself  from  a  frittered  life.  Har- 
der yet  it  is  for  her  than  for  the  boy,  for  so- 
cial custom  is  against  her.  Will  she  be  dar- 
ing, and  not  only  daring  but  persistent?  The 
history  of  achievement  is  usually  the  history 
of  self-made  men  and  self-made  women;  and 
almost  invariably  it  is  the  history  of  tasks^ — if 
not  imposed  by  the  hard  lot  of  circumstance, 
then  self-imposed.  The  story  of  genius  even, 
so  far  as  it  can  be  told  at  all,  is  the  story  of 
persistent  industry  in  the  face  of  obstacles;  and 
some  of  the  standard  geniuses  give  us  their 
word  for  it  that  genius  is  little  more  than  in- 
dustry. A  woman  like  "George  Eliot"  laughs 
at  the  idea  of  writing  her  novels  by  inspira- 
tion. "Genius,"  President  Dwight  used  to  tell 
the  boys  at  Yale,  "is  the  power  of  making 
efforts. " 

A  man  sees  some  great  wrong  in  the  land. 
No  money,  no  friends,  little  culture,  are  his. 
He  hesitates,  knowing  not  what  to  do;  but  the 
wrong  is  there\  it  burns  in  him  till  somehow 
he  finds  a  voice  to  cry  against  it.    At  first  only 


184.  WRESTLING  AND   BLESSING 

a  faint  sound  heard  by  a  few  who  ridicule,  and 
by  one  or  two  who  say,  Amen.  And  from  that 
beginning,  through  the  ridicule  and  violence, 
"in  necessities  and  distresses,  in  labors  and 
watchings  and  fastings,"  he  goes  on,  "as  sor- 
rowful, yet  always  rejoicing,  as  poor,  yet  mak- 
ing many  rich,  as  having  nothing,  yet  possess- 
ing all  things,"  till  men  are  persuaded  and 
confounded,  and  the  wrong  is  trampled  down, 
and  the  victory  is  his!  Such  things  have  been 
done  within  our  knowledge.  The  two  men 
who  started  the  anti-slavery  movement  in  this 
land  were  a  deaf  saddler  and  a  journeyman 
printer,  both  of  them  poor  in  everything  but 
dauntless  purpose.  At  Philadelphia,  a  few 
years  ago,  a  band  of  gray-headed  men  met  to 
look  back  fifty  years  and  talk  over  their  morn- 
ing battle-fields  in  that  great  cause  accom- 
plished. What  a  lesson  of  faith  those  Aboli- 
tionists have  taught  the  nation, — faith  that  a 
relentless  wrestler  can  win  blessings  from  the 
Hard  Lot  and  the  Untoward  Circumstance ! 

3.     A  third   well-known  fighter  waits  in  the 
dark  to  throw  us :  he  bears  the  name  Our  Fail- 


WRESTLING   AND   BLESSING  185 

ures.  How  well  we  know  him!  What  a  prince 
of  disheartenment  he  is!  What  arguments  he 
has  to  prove  to  us  that  trying  is  no  more  of 
any  use!  He  is  our  arch-devil.  And  he,  too, 
and  because  arch-devil,  will  be  our  archangel, 
if  we  will  have  it  so, — the  one  who  warns  and 
guides  and  saves.  Half,  two-thirds,  of  our 
best  experience  in  life  is  his  gift. 

Look  out  along  any  path  of  life  at  the  state- 
liest figures  walking  in  it.  They  are,  most  of 
them,  figures  of  men  that  have  failed  more 
than  once.  Yes,  any  path.  "It  is  very  well," 
said  Fox,  the  great  English  orator,  "very  well 
for  a  young  man  to  distinguish  himself  by  a 
brilliant  first  speech.  He  may  go  on,  or  he 
may  be  satisfied.  Show  me  a  young  man  who 
has  not  succeeded  at  first,  and  has  yet  gone  on^ 
and  I  will  back  him. "  Every  one  has  heard  of 
Disraeli  sitting  down  writhing  under  the  shouts 
of  laughter  with  which  his  dandy  first  speech 
was  received  in  Parliament.  "I  have  begun 
several  times  many  things,  and  have  succeeded 
in  them  at  last,"  he  said;  'I  will  sit  down 
now,  but  the  time  will  come  when  you  will 
hear  me.''     And  it  did  come  to  even  a  dandy, 


1 86  WRESTLING   AND   BLESSING 

who  could  "begin  many  times."  When  John 
Quincy  Adamses  Diary  was  published  not  very 
long  ago,  it  was  strange  to  find  him,  as  a 
young  man,  lamenting  his  absolute  inability 
to  speak  extempore.  An  ineradicable  diffi- 
culty, constitutional,  he  thinks, — and  he  died 
known  as  "the  old  man  eloquent."  These  hap- 
pen, all  of  them,  to  be  the  words  of  orators; 
but  success  in  all  lines  of  life  is  reached,  or 
not  reached— is  lost — by  exactly  the  same 
principle.  Whatever  the  high  aim  be,  "strait 
is  the  gate  and  narrow  the  way"  which  leads 
to  success  in  it.  The  great  chemist  thanked 
God  that  he  was  not  a  skilful  manipulator,  be- 
cause his  failures  had  led  him  to  his  best  dis- 
coveries. The  famous  sculptor,  after  finish- 
ing a  great  work,  went  about  sad:  "What  is 
the  matter?"  asked  his  friend.  "Because  for 
once  I  have  satisfied  my  ideal,  and  have  noth- 
ing left  to  work  toward."  He  wanted  to  fail 
just  a  little  \  Said  a  successful  architect  of 
the  young  men  in  his  office,  who  kept  on 
copying  his  designs,  "Why  do  they  do  the 
things  they  cafi  do?  why  dorC t  they  do  the 
things  they  can't?"     Miss    Alcott    wrote    and 


WRESTLING  AND  BLESSING  1 87 

burnt,  and  burnt  and  wrote,  until  at  last  her 
"Little  Men  and  Women"  came  out  of  the 
fire.  By  the  failure  in  art,  by  the  failure  in 
science,  by  the  failure  in  business,  by  the  fail- 
ure in  character,  if  we  wrestle  on,  we  win 
salvation.  But  all  depends  upon  that  if.  Our 
failures  pave  the  road  to  ruin  or  success.  "  We 
can  rise  by  stepping-stones  of  our  dead  selves 
to  higher  things,"  or  those  dead  selves  can  be 
the  stones  of  stumbling  over  which  we  trip 
to  our  destruction. 

4.  Again,  have  we  ever  known  what  it  is 
to  wrestle  with  Wrong  done  to  us, — wrong  so 
bitter,  perhaps,  that  the  thought  brings  shad- 
ows on  the  face  and  seems  to  be  a  drop  of 
poison  in  the  heart?  And  have  we  learnt  from 
it,  as  many  have,  what  Paul's  "Charity"  chap- 
ter means ;  what  inward  sweetness  forgiveness 
has;  how  we  can  almost  bless  our  injurer  for 
the  good  he  has  done  us  in  thus  teaching  us 
to  know  our  weakness  and  in  calling  out  our  bet- 
ter nature  to  conquer  our  poorer?  "It  is  royal 
to  do  well  and  hear  oneself  evil  spoken  of," 
said  an  old  sage.  Royal, — but  blessed  to  be 
able  to    have    that     feeling     toward    the    evil 


l88  WRESTLING  AND   BLESSING 

speaker,  which  is  not  contempt,  and  is  not 
pride,  and  is  not  wholly  pity  even,  but  real 
and  living  friendliness  welling  up  through  our 
wound  toward  him  by  whom  the  wound  was 
made. 

5.  Have  you  never  wrestled  with  Religious 
Doubts?  Sometimes  not  the  bottom  of  our 
knowledge  only,  but  the  very  bottom  of  our 
faith  in  goodness,  seems  to  give  out.  Perhaps 
some  fearful  tragedy  has  happened.  Death  or 
pain  on  its  mighty  scale  has  stalked  abroad; 
or  some  great  sin  is  triumphant,  and  the  dis- 
honest man,  the  mean  man,  the  selfish  man  is 
exalted,  while  goodness  has  to  hide  its  head; 
and  it  seems  as  if  it  were  madness  to  talk 
about  the  Eternal  Righteousness.  Perhaps 
our  own  life's  disappointments  have  soured 
our  hearts  and  blurred  our  eyes,  till  the  bright- 
est scene  of  pleasantness  can  wear  November 
grays,  and  we  say,  "It  is  always  winter,  and 
never  spring,  to  us. "  Perhaps  dear  old  ideas, 
around  which  our  gratitude  and  reverence  have 
twined,  are  in  decay,  as  new  light  breaks  in 
from  undreamed-of  realms  of    thought, — from 


WRESTLING   AND    BLESSING  189 

an  evolution  theory,  upsetting  and  resetting 
all  our  history  of  providence  ;  from  a  theory  of 
mechanism  in  mind  and  morals,  which  seems 
at  first  glance  to  turn  ourselves  into  physical 
automata,  and  to  dim  all  hope  of  a  life  beyond 
the  body;  from  a  vision  of  Law,  Law,  Law, 
till  we  see  no  room  in  the  universe  for  a  Law- 
giver, no  place  in  our  experience  for  singing 
songs  and  looking  gladly  upward.  And  if, 
having  felt  these  doubts,  you  have  wrestled 
with  them,  not  bidding  them  go,  not  letting 
them  go,  but  holding  on  to  them,  and  think- 
ing deeper,  reading  farther,  looking  more 
patiently  and  less  dogmatically, — above  all,  liv- 
ing more  purely  and  unselfishly, — have  you 
not  found  the  chaos  turning  at  least  by  patches 
into  cosmos,  as  the  brown  fields  of  April  take 
on  their  green?  Have  you  not  caught,  here 
and  there,  a  vision,  which  for  the  moment 
made  the  old  peace  come  again?  Have  you 
not  found  that  life,  the  greater  bringer  of 
mysteries,  was  somehow  also  the  great  solver 
of  mysteries?  If  not  you,  many  a  man  has 
thus  "beaten  his  music  out"  from  the  solid  ar- 
guments of  despair;  has  known  what  it    is  to 


igO  WRESTLING  AND  BLESSING 

pass  from  drifting  doubts, not  into  certainties, 
but  into  Trust  that  has  to  be  spelled  with 
capitals,  if  printed;  Trust  that  can  tell  its 
meaning  best  not  by  any  explanation,  but  by 
cheer  and  serenity,  and  a  feeling  as  of  awed 
triumph  in  life  and  in  death! 

6.  Once  more.  Death:  have  you  ever 
wrestled  with  the  death-sorrow  till  you  know 
its  inner  sweetness?  sweetness  greater  than 
all,  I  would  almost  say.  The  loss  is  loss. 
We  say,  perhaps,  "It  is  their  gain,"  and  wish 
to  be  willing;  but  we  are  not  willing.  Our 
hurt  gets  no  relief.  The  days  go  by,  and  the 
emptiness  is  as  empty,  and  the  silence  as  si- 
lent, and  the  ache  as  relentless  in  its  pain. 
What  shall  we  do?  Our  friends  look  on,  and 
wish  that  they  could  help  us.  And  they  know 
that  help  will  come,  because  to  their  own 
wrestling  it  once  came.  They  know  that  the 
heart  of  this  pain  is  joy  indeed.  And  if  you 
ask  how  it  came  about  in  distress  so  very  sore 
as  yours,  their  differing  words  will  probably 
amount  to  this, — that  such  pain  can  be  stilled 
in  one  way  only,  and    that   is,  by  being    more 


WRESTLING  AND   BLESSING  IQI 

actively  unselfed,  by  doing  more  for  others 
right  through  one's  sadness,  by  trying  hard  to 
do  simply  right.  It  takes  a  wrestle,  yes;  but 
they  will  assure  us  it  is  an  inward  fact,  whose 
chemistry  they  do  not  pretend  to  understand, 
that  helpfulness  and  duty  done  at  such  a  time 
deepen  and  sweeten  into  something  within 
ourselves  that  almost  seems  a  new  experience 
from  its  exceeding  peace.  It  is  not  time  mak- 
ing us  "forget," — nay,  just  the  opposite:  we 
know  that  somehow  this  new  peace  is  vitally 
connected  with  that  pain;  and,  at  last,  we  come 
to  think  of  them  and  feel  them  together.  Later, 
we  begin  to  call  it  peace,  and  forget  that  it 
was  pain.  And,  by  and  by,  the  hour  in  mem- 
ory which  is  our  lingering-place  for  quiet, happy 
thoughts  is  the  very  one  which  is  lighted  by 
a  dead  friend's  face.  It  is  our  heaven-spot; 
and,  like  the  fair  city  of  the  Apocalypse,  it 
hath  no  need  of  sun,  for  the  glory  of  that  face 
doth  lighten  it.  Perhaps,  as  life  goes  by,  there 
will  be  more  than  one  of  these  green  pastures 
with  still  waters,  in  our  inner  life.  And  then 
we  shall  find  out  that  each  death-sorrow  is 
unique.     From  a  brother's   or    a  father's    loss 


192  WRESTLING  AND  BLESSING 

one  can  but  dimly  understand,  I  suppose,  a 
mother's  feeling  when  her  child  has  vanished. 
Each  death  is  so  unique  because  each  life  and 
love  has  been  unique.  No  two  deaths  there- 
fore, will  bless  us  just  alike,  and  we  can  still 
name  our  new  strength  or  our  new  trust  from 
the  separate  love:  it  still  is  "Katie's"  gift,  or 
it  is  "Father's"  gift.  And  thus  the  very  highest 
and  deepest  and  holiest  of  our  experiences  in 
some  way  wear  the  likeness  of  those  friends 
that  we  have  lost. 

It  is  only  another  instance  of  the  correlation 
of  Pain  with  Gain — through  struggle;  the  cor- 
relation of  difficulty  with  exaltation — through 
wrestling:  through  the  struggle,  through  the 
wrestle,  through  our  will  facing  the  hard  thing, 
clinching  it,  never  letting  go,  until  we  feel 
the  gladness  crowning  us.  We  speak  of  the 
"ministry"  of  sin,  of  suffering,  of  disappoint- 
ment, of  sorrow,  and  speak  truly;  but  none  of 
these  "minister,"  not  one,  until  they  have  been 
mastered.  First  our  mastery,  then  their  minis- 
try. We  say  "the  Lord  hath  chastened  us:" 
yes,  but  by  summoning  us  to  a  wrestle  in  which 
it    is  our  part  never  to    let  go!      It  is  not  the 


WRESTLING    AND   BLESSING  I93 

mere  difficulty  that  exalts.  None  of  these  six 
or  seven  things  that  I  have  spoken  of,  neither 
the  Inheritance,  nor  the  Temptation,  nor  the 
Hard  Lot,  nor  the  Failure,  nor  the  Injury,  nor 
the  Doubt,  nor  the  Death,  suffices  by  itself  to 
crown  us.  They  may  just  as  likely  crush  or 
warp  or  embitter  us.  They  do  crush  very 
many;  and  if  they  do  not  crush  or  embitter 
you  or  me,  it  is  because  we  have  used  our 
wills  against  them.  They  only  give  the  op- 
portunity, and  we  decide  whether  it  be  oppor- 
tunity for  bondage  and  maiming,  or  for  the 
blessing  and  the  new  name,  "Israel."  All  de- 
pends on  us. 

On  us, — but  only,  after  all,  as  all  things 
which  we  do  depend  on  us.  On  us,  because 
the  Powers  which  are  not  ourselves  work  jointly 
with  us.  Not  what  we  can  not  do  only, — as 
making  roses,  earthquakes,  solar  systems, 
— but  all  that  we  can  do  also, — breathing,  eat- 
ing, thinking, — confesses  that  Power.  And  as 
in  every  heart-beat  the  universal  forces  of  chem- 
istry come  into  play,  as  in  every  footstep  the 
universal  force  of  gravitation    lays    hold  of  us 


194  WRESTLING   AND  BLESSING 

to  keep  us  poised,  as  in  every  common  sight 
and  sound  the  universal  force  of  light  and  the 
universal  laws  of  undulation  are  invoked,  as 
in  all  ways  physical  we  only  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being  in  virtue  of  that  which  is  not 
we, — so  is  it  with  these  still  more  secret,  not 
less  real,  experiences.  Surely,  not  less  real 
are  these  inward  correlations,  this  moral  chem- 
istry, by  which,  at  the  working  of  a  man's 
will,  pain  is  changed  into  patience  and  pity 
and  cheer,  temptation  into  safeguard,  bitter 
into  sweet  feelings,  weakness  into  strength, 
and  sorrow  into  happier  peace,  at  last.  Are 
these  facts  one  whit  less  real  than  the  facts 
of  the  body's  growth?  A  thousand  hours  of 
struggle  in  every  year  attest  the  facts  for  each 
one  separately.  Here,  also,  as  in  the  body's 
breathing  and  digestion,  a  Great  Life  joins  on 
to  our  little  life,  maintaining  it.  It  is  we  and 
the  Not-We  with  us.  Call  it  by  what  name  we 
will,  we  depend,  and  can  depend,  on  an  In- 
finite Helpfulness  in  all  our  trying.  The  suc- 
cess we  seek  may  fail  for  many  reasons;  but  I 
feel  sure  that  Eternal  Powers  adopt  every  right 
endeavor;    or  rather,  that  every  right  endeavor 


WRESTLING  AND   BLESSING  195 

plays  into  Eternal  Powers  of  Right,  and  is 
thereby  furthered  toward  that  success  which 
will  really  most  bless  you  or  me,  the  trier.  If 
angels  do  not  rejoice  over  us  repenting  and 
bear  us  up,  as  the  Bible  says,  it  is  because 
the  very  Present  Help  that  bears  us  up  has  a 
greater  name  than  "angel,"  and  is  nearer  than 
the  heavens.  No,  not  on  us  alone  does  all  de- 
pend,— because — because  we  never  are  alone! 
I  suspect  that,  followed  to  its  deepest  source, 
our  faith  in  the  Goodness  of  the  universe  will 
be  found  breaking  out  from  some  such  pri- 
vate experience,  solitary  in  each  one,  but  sure 
to  come  to  each  one  that  will  have  it,  —  that  in- 
ward blessing  follows  pain  and  struggle. 

But  it  helps  our  faith  to  trace  in  others  also 
this — law  of  t7'ansfiguration^  shall  I  call  it? 
And  if  we  wish  such  help,  whom  shall  we  look 
at?  Two  classes.  First,  the  "self-made  men," 
as  they  are  styled,  because  from  hard  material 
they  have  forged  their  own  success.  They  are 
our  models  of  courage  and  persistence,  of  dil- 
igence and  fortitude  and  temperance,  of  force 
and  concentration.     By  these  signs  they  have 


lg6  WRESTLING   AND   BLESSING 

conquered.  We  all  recognize  their  victory, 
and  gladly  do  them  reverence.  Their  epitaphs 
might  read,  "These  men  by  wrestling  accom- 
plished all  they  undertook." 

But  more  reverently  yet  I  look  upon  another 
class,  — the  men  who  have  tried  as  faithfully, 
and  from  the  hard  material  have  not  won  great 
success,  so  far  as  we  can  see;  the  women  who 
have  worked,  and  in  working  have  never 
dreamed  of  gaining  special  victory.  Perhaps 
they  lacked  some  needful  element  of  force;  but, 
quite  possibly,  all  they  have  lacked  is  a  little 
selfishness.  The  world  knows  little  of  them. 
They  count  among  the  common  lives,  possibly 
even  among  the  failures.  Emphatically,  these 
do  not  accomplish  all  they  undertake.  Only  the 
few  who  are  nearest  know  of  their  striving, 
and  how  truly  the  striving  has  crowned  their 
brows.  They  themselves  are  not  aware  of  cor- 
onation. They  themselves  only  know  that  they 
have  tried  from  day  to  day,  and  never  seemed 
to  do  the  day's  whole  duty,  and  that  life  has 
brought  many  hard  problems, — but  that  now 
the  problems  are  getting  solved,  and  that  it  is 
quite  possible  to  be  happy,  and  yet  have  failed. 


WRESTLING  AND  BLESSING  ig7 

They  are  humble  usually,  with  an  air  of  wist- 

fulness  in  their  eyes  and    in    their    talk,  as  of 

men  who  have    been    comforted  by  aspiration, 

not    attainment.     They    have    learnt    to   hope 

that 

"All  instincts  immature, 
All  purposes  unsure, 
All  I  can  never  be, 
All  men  ignore  in  me, — 
This  I  am  worth  to  God." 

They  have  learned  to  hope  that.  They  have 
learned  that  they  will  never  do  great  things. 
Still,  if  any  hard  thing  is  to  be  done,  specially 
any  burden  to  be  bornC;  you  will  find  them 
already  there  at  work  when  you  have  made  up 
your  mind  to  go.  They  are  great  common- 
helpers.  They  think  they  know  nothing,  and 
truly  they  are  not  geniuses;  yet  bright  people 
in  straits  have  a  habit  of  coming  to  them  for 
advice.  Not  rich,  yet  men  and  v/omen  whose 
practical  aid  in  trouble  is  counted  on  without 
the  asking.  They  are  rare  friends,  because 
their  minds  are  so  rich  with  life's  experience, 
their  hearts  so  sweet  with  it.  They  speak  the 
fitting  word  to  us  in  our  self-building,  because 
there  was  once  a  scaffolding,  long  since  taken 


198  WRESTLING  AND   BLESSING 

down,  by  which  they  built  that  same  part  in 
themselves,  and  they  remember  all  about  the 
difficulty.  They  are  better  than  a  poem  by 
Browning,  or  even  that  letter  of  Paul  or  the 
chapter  in  Epictetus,  because  in  them  we  meet 
the  hero-force  itself  in  brave  original. 

I  passed  a  woman  in  the  street  one  day,  and 
passed  on,  for  she  did  not  see  me.  But  why 
not  speak?  I  thought,  so  back  I  turned,  and, 
besides  the  greeting,  she  dropped  on  me  four 
sentences  such  as  we  go  to  Emerson  to  read, — 
made  me  for  the  time  four  thoughts  richer  in 
three  minutes.  They  were  life  distilled  in 
words, — her  life  distilled;  though  she  told  me 
then  and  there  that  she  "died"  long  before, — 
she  seemed  to  herself  in  latter  years  to  do  and 
be  so  little.  Perhaps  she  had  died,  and  I  saw 
her  immortality;  for  only  the  wings  were  want- 
ing on  the  old  shoulders.  She  had  been  a 
humble  struggler;  and,  as  I  saw  her,  she  seemed 
to  wear  a  crown  and  the  name,  "Israel." 

I  will  sum    it  up.     Here   is  all  my   sermon, 

and  in  another  woman's  words.     She  calls  her 

poem,  "Treasures." 

Let  me  count  my  treasures, 
All  my  soul  holds  dear, 


WRESTLING  AND   BLESSING  IQQ 


Given  me  by  dark  spirits 
Whom  I  used  to  fear. 


Through  long  days  of  anguish 
And  sad  nights  did  Pain 

Forge  my  shield  Endurance^ 
Bright  and  free  from  stain. 

Doubt  in  misty  caverns, 
Mid  dark  horrors,  sought, 

Till  my  peerless  jewel 
Faith  to  me  she  brought. 

Sorrow,  that  I  wearied 
Should  remain  so  long, 

Wreathed  my  starry  glory, 
The  bright  crown  of  Sojtg. 

Strife,  that  racked  my  spirit 
Without  hope  or  rest. 

Left  the  blooming  flower 
Patience  on  my  breast. 

Suffering,  that  I  dreaded, 
Ignorant  of  her  charms, 

Laid  the  fair  child  Pity, 
Smiling  in  my  arms. 

So  I  count  my  treasures, 
Stored  in  days  long  past; 

And  I  thank  the  Givers, 
Whom  I  know  at  last! 


THE  DIVINE  BENEDICTION 

"And  the  peace  of  God,  which  passeth  all  understanding, 
shall  guard  your  hearts  and  your  thoughts  in  Christ  Jesus." 
— Philippians  iv:  7. 

Our  Bible  is  a  turbulent  book.  The  Old 
Testament  is  a  sea  in  which  the  waves  roll 
high.  Even  in  its  calmer  conditions,  the  white 
caps  are  ever  in  view.  Mid  the  din  of  earthly 
battles  the  turmoil  of  the  spirit  appears,  rest- 
less longings  of  the  heart,  quenchless  fires  of 
hope  and  shame,  the  unceasing  antagonisms 
of  thought.  Not  less  but  more  turbulent  is  the 
New  Testament,  because  the  contest  has  car- 
ried the  flags  inwardjthe  line  of  battle  is  formed 
on  spiritual  rather  than  on  material  fields. 

And  yet  the  great  Bible  word  is  peace; 
over  and  over  again  do  we  come  upon  it; 
peace  is  the  prophetic  dream  and  almost  the 
universal  promise.  According  to  Young's  Con- 
cordance, the  word  occurs  some  one  hundred 
200 


THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION  20I 

and  sevent3^-five  times  in  the  Old  Testament 
and  eighty  nine  times  in  the  New,  forty-two 
of  which  occur  in  the  letters  of  the  first  great 
soldier  of  the  cross,  the  hunted,  homeless  and 
apparently  friendless  Paul.  Although  Jesus 
said,  "I  come  not  to  bring  peace  but  a  sword," 
yet  he  went  to  his  martyr  death  leaving  behind 
him  the  serene  promise,  "Peace  I  leave  with 
you,  my  peace  I  give  unto  you."  All  this  leads 
up  to  the  text,  v/hich  suggests  the  Divine  Ben- 
ediction, "the  peace  of  God,  which  passeth  all 
understanding."  We  touch  here  the  great  par- 
adox of  religion.  All  lives,  like  those  reflected 
in  the  Bible,  are  cast  upon  stormy  seas.  Stormy 
have  been  the  centuries.  Feverish  are  our  years. 
Anxious  are  our  days.  How  restless  the  heart 
of  man!  what  distrustful  days  it  spends,  ending 
in  sleepless  nights!  and  yet,  peace  is  the  hunger 
of  the  human  heart;  it  is  the  pathetic  cry  of  the 
soul.  Surely  "how  beautiful  on  the  mountains 
are  the  feet  of  them  that  publish  peace!"  Now 
and  then  the  spirit  is  permitted  to  receive  the 
divine  benediction;  and  these  moments  of  reali- 
zation give  assurance  that  our  wants  are  reason- 
able,   and    that   the   hunger   may   be    satisfied. 


202  THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION 

Peace  is  the  endowment  of  religion;  the  peace 
strains  of  the  Bible  ever  carry  with  them  the  re- 
ligious refrain.  Jesus  and  Paul,  knowing  peace, 
knew  something  that  politics,  society  and  money 
can  not  give. 

The  text  suggests  the  first  thing  to  be  said  con- 
cerning the  peace  of  religion,  the  peace  that  is  of 
God — viz.:  *'It  passeth  understanding.'*  It  is 
something  deeper  than  knowledge,  it  is  not  com- 
passed by  our  reason.  The  most  helpful  view 
Chicago  can  offer  is  that  indefinite  line  of  vision 
far  out  in  the  lake  where  the  water  meets  the 
sky.  The  finest  line  in  every  landscape  is  the 
horizon  line.  On  the  border  land  of  thought  lie 
the  reverences.  Where  our  petty  certainties  end, 
there  our  holy  worship  begins.  The  child  trusts 
father  or  mother,  because  in  them  it  discovers  a 
power  it  cannot  understand;  it  rests  upon  that 
reserve  force  it  can  not  imitate  or  measure. 
When  man  or  woman  discovers  in  the  other  un- 
expected forces,  a  fervor  unmeasured,  a  power 
of  endurance  unexpected,then  love  finds  a  divine 
resting  place.  The  love  that  is  trustworthy,  that 
has  the  divine  quality  of  lasting,  is  the  love  that 
rests  on  the  foundation   **which   passeth   under- 


THE  DIVINE   BENEDICTION  203 

Standing."  To  call  for  explanations  or  to  try  to 
measure,  with  the  clumsy  tools  the  brain  affords, 
profoundest  verities  of  any  moment  in  our  lives 
is  to  pass  out  of  the  peace  of  God  into  the  pitiful 
turmoils  of  men.  The  man  loves  the  woman  with 
a  pure  love  when  he  finds  in  her  a  power  he  can 
not  understand.  The  woman  loves  the  man  with 
a  peaceful  love  when  it  rests  on  forces  that  are 
beyond  her  measurement.  We  swim  buoyantly 
in  the  sea  in  which,  if  we  try  to  touch  bottom,  we 
shall  be  drowned.  Music,  art,  companionship, 
owe  their  power  to  that  which  eludes  analysis, 
''which  passeth  understanding."  The  simplest 
pleasures  have  a  circumference  too  wide  to  be 
circumscribed  by  our  compasses;  the  color  of 
the  violet,  the  perfume  of  the  rose,  the  flavor  of 
the  strawberry,  bring  a  joy  beyond  our  measur- 
ing and  give  a  peace  that  transcends  our  reason, 
not  because  it  is  unreasonable,  but  because  it 
springs  from  the  same  source  as  that  from  which 
reason  comes.  How  much  more  does  the  peace- 
giving  power  of  truth-seeking,  right  doing,  and 
loving  envelop  our  understanding;  it  encloses  it, 
and  consequently  can  not  be  encompassed  by  it. 
When  the  lonely  heart  awakens  to  a  sense  of  fel" 


204  THE  DIVINE   BENEDICTION 

lowship  and  its  isolation  is  enveloped  with  kin- 
dred spirits;  when  finiteness  melts  into  infinitude; 
when  weakness  feels  the  embrace  of  a  love  that 
is  omnipotence;  when  ignorance  bows  before  in- 
finite verities,  and  knowledge  grows  large  enough 
to  find  its  measureless  ignorance;  then  that  knowl- 
edge is  changed  into  the  wisdom  that  is  ^'better 
than  riches,"  the  '^peace  that  passeth  under- 
standing." The  love  that  needs  proving  is  not 
the  love  that  brings  peace.  The  God  that  is  un- 
derstood, that  can  be  held  in  your  terms  and 
handled  in  my  words,  has  little  peace-producing 
power;  he  is  not  God  at  all,  as  the  jargon  of  the 
creeds,  the  quarrels  of  the  sects,  and  the  rest- 
lessness of  the  theologians  amply  prove.  Who 
has  not  felt  the  truth  of  James  Martineau's  words 
when  he  said: 

"Those  who  tell  me  too  much  about  God;  who  speak  as 
if  they  knew  his  motive  and  his  plan  in  everything,  who  are 
never  at  a  loss  to  name  the  reason  of  every  structure  and 
show  the  tender  mercy  of  every  event;  who  praise  the  clev- 
erness of  the  Eternal  economy,  and  patronize  it  as  a  master- 
piece of  forensic  ingenuity;  who  carry  themselves  through 
the  solemn  glades  of  Providence  with  the  springy  steps  and 
jaunty  air  of  a  familiar;  do  but  drive  me  by  the  very  defin. 
iteness  of  their  assurance  into  an  indefinite  agony   of  doubt 


THE   DIVINE    BENEDICTION  205 

and  impel  me  to  cry,  'Ask  of  me  less,  and  I  shall  give  you 
all.'" 

In  all  this  I  mean  no  disrespect  to  the  inquirer. 
There  is  no  irreverence  in  thoughtfulness;  I  re- 
member with  Tennyson  that  ''there  is  more  faith 
in  honest  doubt  than  in  half  the  creeds."  There 
is  a  wide  difference  between  the  reverence  that  is 
touched  into  life-mellowing  power  on  the  horizon 
line  of  knowledge;  that  is  rooted  in  the  subsoil 
of  being,  the  unexplored  depths  of  experience; 
and  that  nervous  clutch  of  timid  souls  that  grasp 
at  a  faith  that  conflicts  with  knowledge.  I  would 
not  shut  the  eyes  in  the  temple  lest  in  looking  they 
discover  blemishes  in  the  altar.  This  is  super- 
stition; that  is  religion.  The  bigot  is  afraid  to 
think;  the  true  devotee  of  the  nineteenth  century 
is  most  afraid  of  thoughtlessness.  Not  he  who 
distrusts  the  methods  of  reason,  but  he  who  fol- 
lows every  line  of  investigation,  finds  at  last  all 
lines  melt  into  transcendent  beauty,  fade  into 
the  hallowed  mystery  that  is  pervaded  with  the 
peace  of  God.  Not  a  sense  of  emptiness  but  of 
fullness  rewards  the  investigator.  The  ''peace 
that  passeth  understanding"  rests  on  the  infinity 
of  reality  over  there,  not  on  the  finiteness  of  our 
ignorance,  which  stops  here. 


206  THE   DIVINE    BENEDICTION 

"  When  doors  great  and  small, 
Nine  and  ninety  flew  open  at  our  touch, 
Should  the  hundredth  appall? 

******* 

"I  but  open  my  eyes,  and  perfection,  no  more  and  no  less, 
In  the  kind  I  imagined,  full-fronts  me,  and  God  is  seen  God 
In  the  star,  in  the  stone,  in  the  flesh,  in  the  soul  and  the  clod. 
And  thus  looking  within  and  around  me,  I  ever  renew 
(With  that  stoop  of  the  soul  which  in  bending  upraises  it  too) 
The  submission  of  man's  nothing-perfect  to  God's  all-com- 
plete, 
As  by  each  new  obeisance  in  spirit  I  climb  to  his  feet." 

Let  us  think  more  intently  of  these  horizon 
lines  that  "pass  our  understanding,"  which  yield 
first  a  beauty  and  then  the  peace  of  God.  Thus 
thinking,  the  world  hangs  together  better,  the 
?////verse  comes  out,  breaks  upon  the  soul  and 
claims  it  as  its  own.  Short  lines  reveal  the  an- 
tagonisms of  things,  the  friction  of  ideas,  the 
contradiction  of  experiences.  Long  lines  show 
things  in  their  relations;  antagonisms  blend  into 
harmonies,  and  the  friction  becomes  the  result 
of  blessed  movement,  the  great  wheels  that  move 
in  the  mechanism  of  Divine  order.  "The  world 
is  not  all  in  pieces,  but  all  together,"  sa3^s  Bar- 
tol.     I  believe  in  science,  but  peace  is    the    gift 


THE  DIVINE  BENEDICTION  207 

of  religion;  because  the  method  of  the  first  is 
analytic,  it  pulls  apart,  it  dismembers,  it  is  in 
search  of  differences.  Religion — not  theology, 
but  religion — is  synthetic;  it  puts  together,  it 
rests  in  the  Infinite  Unity.  The  words  holiness 
and  wholeness  are  related.  Peace  comes  when 
we  take  things  in  the  large.  It  is  well  to  know 
that  oxygen  and  hydrogen  are  the  component 
parts  of  water,  but  when  our  thirst  is  slaked, 
when  we  plunge  and  swim  in  glad  freedom, these 
elements  blend  in  unquestioned  unity.  Blessed 
be  science,  her  work  is  most  religious,  but  it  is 
not  religion.  We  need  the  solvents  in  the  labo- 
ratory to  test  our  ores,  to  find  our  metals.  Let 
the  botanist  destroy  the  one  flower  that  he  may 
better  understand  the  beauty  of  its  countless  com- 
panions in  the  field.  Let  the  students  have  now 
and  then  a  body  to  dissect,  that  the  living  tene- 
ment of  the  soul  may  be  better  understood 
and  appreciated.  But  do  not  forget  in  any  of 
these  cases  that  ^^man  puts  asunder  what  God 
joins  together. '^  Division  is  in  the  thought, 
union  is  in  the  fact.  Go  in  search  of  God  with 
your  microscope,  seek  him  with  your  telescope, 
and  you  are  pretty  sure  to  miss  him.     Hold  your 


208  THE   DIVINE    BENEDICTION 

love,  human  or  divine,  at  arm's  length,  try  to 
test  it  with  your  little  probes,  and  the  chances 
are  that  you  will  kill  it  altogether;  you  will  not 
find  it,  not  because  it  is  so  small,  but  because  it 
is  so  great.  Your  tools  are  the  clumsy  things. 
''Canst  thou  by  searching  find  out  God?"  asks 
the  old  sage.  No,  because  he  is  in  the  search. 
My  friend  M.  J.  Savage  sings  this  truth  in  these 
exquisite  lines: 

"Oh,  where  is  the  Sea?"  the  fishes  cried, 
As  they  swam  the  crystal  clearness  through, 

"We've  heard  from  of  old  of  the  ocean's  tide, 
And  we  long  to  look  on  the  waters  blue. 
The  wise  ones  speak  of  the  infinite  sea, 
Oh,  who  can  tell  us  if  such  there  be?" 

The  lark  flew  up  in  the  morning  bright. 
And  sung  and  balanced  on  sunny  wings; 
And  this  was  its  song:     "I  see  the  light, 
I  look  o'er  a  world  of  beautiful  things; 
But,  flying  and  singing  everywhere, 
In  vain  I  have  searched  to  find  the  air." 

Herbert  Spencer  has  called  his  system  of  phil- 
osophy ''synthetic."  John  Fiske,  his  ablest  in- 
terpreter, calls  his  work  "Cosmic  Philosophy." 
These  very  titles  prophesy  great  religious  out- 
come.    They  will  eventually  lead  us  not  only  in 


THE    DIVINE   BENEDICTION  20g 

the  '^ways  of  wisdom"  but  into  the  ^'paths  of 
peace. "  The  old  philosophies  were  analytic;  based 
on  them  the  theologians'  work  is  still  to  divide; 
they  are  trying  to  separate  goats  from  sheep, 
heretic  from  Christian,  theist  from  atheist.  This 
is  dreary  business;  it  brings  such  small  returns. 
The  peace  of  God  comes  not  on  these  lines. 
Discordant  notes  become  harmonious  in  the  dis- 
tance, the  hard  and  cruel  things  to-day  prove  to 
be  parts  of  a  blessed  providence  ten  years  from 
to-day.  That  which  is  a  puzzle  in  the  life  of  the 
individual  becomes  principle  in  the  history  of 
the  race;  the  blackest  pages  of  local  history  are 
the  illuminating  spots  in  the  story  of  humanity. 
The  impassioned  faith  of  the  apostle,  * 'Our  light 
affliction,  which  is  but  for  a  moment,  worketh 
for  us  a  far  more  exceeding  and  eternal  weight 
of  glory,"  is  the  simple  lesson  of  the  scientific 
student  of  history.  Do  these  long  lines  lead  us 
to  the  peace  of  God?  I  may  not  know  why  the 
road  is  rugged,  but  if  it  leads  to  the  delectable 
mountains  I  will  cheerfully  climb,  rocks  and 
brambles  notwithstanding.     If  it  be  true  that 

'  'By  the  thorn  road,  and  none  other,  is  the  mount  of  vision 
won," 


210  THE   DIVINE    BENEDICTION 

I  am  for  the  mount,  all  the  same.  If  it  be  true, 
'<No  cross,  no  crown,"  we  seek  the  crown  not- 
withstanding. When  I  am  immersed  in  my 
little  troubles,  and  my  heart  is  weak  with  loneli- 
ness, it  does  help  to  think  how  blessed  have  been 
the  great  troubles  of  the  world,  how  wilderness 
wanderings  have  led  to  Canaan.  Seven  years 
of  privations  and  war  preceded  the  first  century 
of  a  republic  whose  material  growth  is  paralleled 
by  its  increasing  hospitality  to  thought.  Four 
years  of  awful  battle,  four  millions  of  emanci- 
pated slaves.  How  little  did  the  Continental 
soldier  know  of  the  republic !  How  short-sighted 
were  the  men  of  vision  even  during  the  last  war! 
Let  us  not  begrudge  tears  if  they  fall  on  soul 
gardens  that  bloom  more  beautifully  for  the 
watering.  Welcome  trouble,  welcome  loneliness, 
and  the  inexpressible  pain  it  brings,  if  thereby 
somewhere,  some  time,  and  to  somebody  it 
brings  in  some  fuller  measure  ^'the  peace  of  God 
that  passeth  understanding." 

I  have  yet  touched  but  one  end  of  this  great 
truth.  We  must  never  forget  the  near  end  of 
the  long  line  that  leads  to  **the  peace  of   God." 


THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION  211 

The  Greek  word  translated  *'peace"  in  my  text, 
means  also  unity,  concord.  This  leaves  large 
responsibility  at  the  small  end  of  things.  Nay, 
the  great  end  of  things  for  you  and  me  is  the  end 
at  v^hich  we  stand.  We  must  put  ourselves  in 
line.  The  horizon  glories  array  themselves  onlj^ 
to  the  eyes  that  are  turned  that  way.  Our  lives 
are  fragments  of  the  perfect  whole;  if  we  invert 
or  pervert  them  we  mar  the  whole  pattern.  Our 
to-days  and  to-morrows  are  segments  of  eternity. 
As  long  as  we  think  of  ourselves  as  objects  of 
some  special  spite,  as  neglected  children,  the  un- 
fortunate victims  of  bad  luck,  or  even  that  we 
are  tortured  in  some  special  way  for  mere  disci- 
pline's  sake,  the  ''peace  of  God"  is  not  for  us; 
but  when  we  realize  that  we  are  linked  to  Jupiter, 
that  the  pulse  in  my  wrist  is  a  part  of  that  rhythm 
that  causes  the  tides  of  the  Atlantic  to  ebb  and 
flow,  that  the  earthquake  at  Charleston  was  the 
working  of  the  same  force  that  lifted  the  Alle- 
ghanies  and  folded  the  geologic  layers  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  then  shall  we  be  prepared  to 
enter  into  ''the  peace  that  passeth  understand- 
ing;" then  our  human  loves  become  a  part  of 
the  Divine  love.     When  we  know  that   our   life 


212  THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION 

is  engirdled  with  law,  fortitude  will  change  grief 
into  resignation  and  defeat  into  triumph.  If  you 
would  help  a  soul  bear  its  present  sorrow,  intro- 
duce it  to  a  greater  one.  Put  your  small  grievan- 
ces into  their  proper  perspective,  and  they  cease 
to  be  grievances,  because  you  have  removed  the 
stumbling  block.  It  is  not  the  province  of  re- 
ligion to  explain  the  ways  of  God  to  man,  it  is 
not  forme  to  apologize  for  the  universe;  it  is  for 
us  to  recognize  the  facts.  As  we  discover  these, 
religion  helps  us  either  to  bear  or  to  change 
them.  Would  you  know  the  peace  of  God, realize 
that  you  are  a  part  of  that  infinite  majesty, strive 
to  catch  now  and  then  a  note  of  the  heavenly 
melody,  chant  a  stray  chord  of  the  infinite  har- 
mony,remember  that  everything  beautiful  springs 
from  a  beauty  that  is  behind  it,  every  strong  will 
rises  from  a  strength  underneath,  and  all  your 
loves  are  fed  from  the  fountains  of  infinite  love. 
And  for  yourself  you  may  mar  the  beautiful  or 
reflect  it,  you  can  either  enter  into  the  strength 
or  become  its  victim,  know  the  love  or  thwart 
it.  We  are  impatient  only  when  we  forget  the 
infinite  patience,  we  are  petulant  when  we  turn 
away  from  the  unresting  and  unhasting  stars  that 


THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION  21 3 

move  in  their  unimpassioned  orbits  in  darkest 
nights.  We  are  discouraged  when  we  fail  to 
keep  step  with  the  solemn  tramp  of  the  genera- 
tions. The  wrong  judgments  of  men  hurt  us  not 
if  we  remember  that  the  balances  of  God  are 
justly  poised.  No  thought  of  ours  is  insignificant 
if  we  reverently  cradle  it  in  the  thought  of  God. 
No  plan  of  ours  will  be  abandoned  if  we  are  sure 
it  is  a  part  of  the  infinite  plan.  We  have  a  will 
of  our  own  only  when  we  believe  it  to  be  God's 
will  also. 

A  friend  wrote  me  the  other  day  from  the 
heart  of  the  Adirondacks,  sitting  on  the  grave 
of  John  Brown:  *'It  is  hard  to  put  it  all  to- 
gether— the  human  part  of  it  into  the  setting;  — 
to  think  that  from  this  cranny  in  the  wilderness, 
a  man  not  unlike  all  the  farmers  around  went 
out  and  did  the  deed  which  begun  and  half  won 
the  war,  and,  that  deed  done,  was  brought  back 
here,  is  lying  there  under  the  sweet  briers  on 
the  mound,  with  his  name  forever  safe  among 
the  'mad  men'  of  history,  the  heroes  and  the  na- 
tion shapers.  Here  they  come,  another  party 
just  driven  up  from  somewhere  out  in  Sanity  to 
see  the  grave,  — two  of  them  were  not  born  when 


214  '^^^   DIVINE   BENEDICTION 

John  Brown  did  it — nine  hundred  and  forty  of 
them  so  far  this  year."  Thus  it  is  that  a  man's 
small  plans  reach  out  into  futurity,  when  they 
spring  out  of  angel  purposes;  thus  it  is  a  mortal 
man  casts  an  immortal  shadow. 

*'The  great  deed  ne'er  grows  small,"  and  every 
kind  word,  helpful  smile,  and  guileless  kiss,  are 
great  deeds,  and  they  always  will  make  for  ''the 
peace  that  passeth  understanding,"  such  as  my 
friend  found  when  the  sunset  glows  rested  upon 
the  lowly  grave  in  the  valley  of  North  Elba, 
rimmed  round  by  the  great  mountains. 

Poetry  is  not  rhymed  fancy  but  the  higher 
truth,  the  truth  within  the  facts,  the  thought 
that  is  not  reached  by  thinking,  the  sensibility 
out  of  which  sense  springs.  Thus  the  poet  is 
ever  the  truest  interprster  of  religion.  He  who 
sees  the  matchless  harmony,  the  measureless 
power,  and  infinite  delicacy  all  around  him,  sees 
God,  but  he  who  feels  himself  intricately  dove- 
tailed into  all  this,  who  realizes  that  man  is  the 
most  intimate  child  of  all  the  forces  of  God  that 
play  around  us,  knows  * 'the  peace  of  God  that 
passeth  all  understanding." 

"Such  a  starved  bank  of  moss 
Till,  that  May-morn, 


THE  DIVINE   BENEDICTION  21$ 

Blue  ran  the  flash  across: 
Violets  were  born! 

"Sky — what  a  scowl  of  cloud 

Till,  near  and  far, 
Ray  on  ray  split  the  shroud: 

Splendid,  a  star! 

"World — how  it  walled  about 

Life  with  disgrace, 
Till  God's  own  smile  came  out: 

That  was  thy  face!" 

The  beauty  of  the  violet,  the  glory  of  the  sol- 
itary star,  lead  up  to  the  fullness  of  the  divine 
tenderness  revealed  in  a  woman's  face,  and  this 
leads  us  inward  to  seek  the  sources  of  *'the  peace 
that  passeth  understanding."  The  power  that 
taught  the  bird  to  build  its  nest,  that  surveyed  the 
streets  in  the  ant-village,  guides  us. 

"He  is  eyes  for  all  who  is  eyes  for  the  mole." 

Restless,  weak,  sinful  man  is  more  than  bee  or 
bird.  That  progressive  teacher  that  instructed 
the  woodpecker  to  excavate  a  home  in  the  rotten 
tree  ripened  in  man  his  reason.  The  granite 
palace  and  the  public  library  are  diviner  mys- 
teries than  the  pine  tree,  as  the  state  house  is  a 


2l6  THE   DIVINE    BENEDICTION 

more  towering  manifestation  of  the  invisible  God 
than  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

"  Knowest  thou  what  wove  you  woodbird's  nest 
Of  leaves  and  feathers  from  her  breast? 
Or  how  the  fish  outbuilt  her  shell, 
Painting  with  morn  each  annual  cell? 
Or  how  the  sacred  pine-tree  adds 
To  her  old  leaves  new  myriads? 
Such  and  so  grew  these  holy  piles, 
Whilst  love  and  terror  laid  the  tiles, 
Earth  proudly  wears  the  Parthenon, 
As  the  best  gem  upon  her  zone." 

The  best  of  all  this  is  that  life  enlarges  and  deep- 
ens mostly  through  experience,  not  through  the 
lore  of  books,  but  by  the  discipline  of  life.  God 
writes  his  name  upon  the  hearts  of  men  with  his 
own  tools.  As  the  rivulet  scoops  out  the  valley  and 
molds  the  hill-side  and  carves  the  mountain  face, 
so  the  stream  of  time  sculptures  the  soul  into 
grace  and  smooths  the  human  heart  into  tender- 
ness. 

One  beautiful  morning  when  the  train  stopped 
at  Falls  View  to  give  the  passengers  a  touch 
of  that  mighty  majesty  in  nature,  the  Falls  of 
Niagara,  I  helped  out  an  old  lady,  who,  on 
her   way   from    Nova    Scotia,    was   taking   her 


THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION  217 

first  railroad  ride  in  the  eighty-third  year  of 
her  life.  She  was  coming  west,  as  she  cheer- 
fully said,  to  die  in  the  home  of  her  son,  who 
lived  at  Sandwich,  Illinois.  He  was  the  only 
one  left  of  the  eight  she  had  reared  to  manhood 
and  womanhood.  The  passengers,  as  is  their 
custom,  soon  fell  into  clusters  on  the  brink  of  the 
precipice.  There  were  young  women  just  from 
school,  who  were  profuse  with  their  superlatives, 
*'most  splendid,"  ^'magnificent,"  ''awful!'* 
There  were  young  men  who  jumped,  clapped 
their  hands,  threw  up  their  caps  and  hurrahed. 
The  middle  aged  were  awed  into  more  reveren- 
tial manners,  and  made  their  comments  to  one 
another  in  subdued  undertones.  I  watched  and 
waited  to  see  what  powers  of  interpretation 
eighty-three  toilful  and  tearful  years  had  given 
to  this  simple  soul,  the  venerable  grandmother, 
the  mother  of  seven  buried  children.  Aye,  in 
vain  do  we  attempt  to  fathom  the  meaning  of 
these  words,  "seven  buried  children!"  She 
stood  silent  and  motionless.  I  watched  the  fur- 
rowed face,  but  no  gleam  of  emotion  came  to 
the  surface.  At  last  the  bell  rang,  and  as  she 
turned  she  said,  with  traces  of  tears  in  her  voice, 


2l8  THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION 

but  none  in  her  eyes — I  think  tears  do  not  readily 
reach  the  surface  in  the  eighties — "Mister>  what 
a  deal  of  troubled  waters  is  there!*'  and  that  was 
all.  Ah,  the  seething,  tumbling,  unceasing  roar 
of  that  outward  Niagara  must  have  started  again 
the  memories  of  the  still  greater  Niagara  of 
life,  unseen  to  outward  eye,  unknown  to  all  the 
rest  of  the  world,  but  to  her  tempestuous  with 
its  grief.  In  its  stream  rebeUious  passions 
boiled;  clamorous  wants  and  misty  longings  had 
channeled  their  chasms  in  her  heart,  and  more 
than  once  deafened  her  ears  to  all  other  sounds. 
Well  hast  thou  interpreted,  venerable  grand- 
mother! Sublime  is  the  immobility  secured 
through  the  knowledge  of  a  still  greater  cataract! 
Yes,  there  is  a  "deal  of  troubled  waters"  at 
Niagara,  h\xt  you  know  of  another  river — 

"whose  waters  were  a  torrent 
Sweeping  through  your  life  amain." 

Farther  down,  the  waters  cease  their  troub- 
ling; eddies,  whirlpools,  fretting  isles  and  jutting 
rocks  are  all  passed,  and  even  the  troubled  Ni- 
agara finds  peace  at  last  in  the  bosom  of  the 
great  ocean.  Poised  and  purified  it  rests  in  the 
arms  of  infinite  law, 


THE  DIVINE  BENEDICTION  219 

"And  still  it  moves,  a  broadening  flood; 

And  fresher,  fuller  grows 
A  sense  as  if  the  sea  were  near, 
Toward  which  the  river  flows. 

"O  thou,  who  art  the  secret  source 

That  rises  in  each  soul, 
Thou  art  the  Ocean,  too, — thy  charm, 
That  ever  deepening  roll!" 

So  in  lowliest  lives  we  find  foundations  for  ''the 
peace  that  passeth  all  understanding."  In  life, 
in  its  meanest  estate,  besmirched  with  passion, 
distraught  with  misplaced  confidences,  weakened 
with  unrequited  loves,  back  of  the  beggarly  rags 
of  inebriety,  we  may  overhear  the  groans  of  the 
imprisoned  spirit:  we  may  detect  the  blush  long 
since  retreated  from  the  face,  still  haunting  with 
its  redemptive  glow  some  of  the  inner  recesses 
of  heart  and  brain;  so  we  who  have  already  been 
taught  that  there  is  that  which  has  high  uses  for 
lowly  things,  which  conserves  the  beautiful  in 
coarsest  elements,  come  back  to  that  ''peace  that 
passeth  understanding,"  and  believe  that 

"warm 
Beneath  the  veriest  ash,  there  hides  a  spark  of  soul, 
Which,  quickened  by  love's  breath,  may  yet  pervade  the 

whole 
O'  the  gray,  and,  free  again,  be  fire." 


220  THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION 

Then,  in  common  with  the  noblest  prophets  of 
all  religion,  we  shall  have  a  growing  faith  in  the 
possibilities  of  human  nature,  a  deep  confidence 
that  underneath  all  sin  there  lies  the  God-like 
essence  in  man;  and  in  the  face  of  all  the  horrid 
facts  of  the  police-court  and  the  prison,  the 
wretched  abuse  of  human  confidence,  the  brutal 
staining  of  human  innocence,  we  will  believe  that 

•'a  sun  will  pierce 
The  thickest  cloud  earth  ever  stretched; 
That  what  began  best  can't  end  vv'orst, 
Nor  what  God  blessed  once  prove  accurst." 

Yes,  the  faithful  dog  that  asks  for  one  sym- 
pathetic pat  upon  its  head,  the  child  that  nestles 
in  your  lap,  the  man  whose  arm  lovingly  sustains 
you,  the  woman  whose  lips  are  graciously  ten- 
dered you  to  kiss, — these  little  threads  of  celes-* 
tial  origin  weave  for  us  heavenly  garments,  and 
our  dear,  earthly  loves  become  celestial  by-ways 
beyond  our  understanding.  God's  own  love 
comes  to  us  through  the  lowliest  door,  and  the 
arms  of  the  Eternal  embrace  us  in  the  babe's 
clasp. 

And  still  we  climb,  and  still  the  divine  bene- 


THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION  221 

diction  salutes  us,  embosoms  us.  If  science 
ever  melts  into  a  sense  of  infinite  reality,  if  high- 
est intelligence  kneels  in  devout  confession  of 
ignorance,  if  the  shyest  human  love  knows  no 
boundaries  between  it  and  the  love  of  God,  how 
surely  will  the  high  endeavor  of  conscience  land 
us  at  the  feet  of  Omnipotence,  and  give  us  ''the 
peace  of  God  that  passeth  all  understanding"! 
Follow  duty,  if  you  would  know  the  Christ-like 
calm  in  the  presence  of  wrong;  follow  duty  if  you 
would  change  resentment  into  patience,  resist- 
ance into  forgiveness.  Duty  is  the  great  moun- 
tain road  to  God.  "When  we  cease  to  long  for 
perfection,  corruption  sure  and  speedy  leads 
from  life  to  death,"  says  William  Morris.  He 
who  does  not  turn  a  willing  ear  to  the  voice  of 
conscience  will  soon  miss  the  divine  on  every 
hand.  Music,  poetry,  painting,  sculpture,  science, 
one  after  the  other  will  silently  close  their  doors 
in  the  face  of  him  who  does  not  seek  the  right. 
The  ''peace  of  God"  shines  most  visibly  on  the 
brow  of  the  brave.  See  it  when  Abraham  Lin- 
coln strikes  the  shackles  from  off  human  limbs. 
See  it  make  noble  the  great  Gladstone  as  he 
stands  up  in  the  face  of  centuries  of   wrong   to 


222  THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION 

plead  for  the  right  of  those  who  fail  to  exact  it 
for  themselves.  Do  your  duty,  else  no  knowl- 
edge, beauty  or  love  will  ever  lead  you  to  the 
peace  of  God.  He  who  says,  **I  may  not  be 
great;  I  may  miss  all  peace,  but  I  will  be  true," 
stands  at  the  altar  from  which  the  divine  bene- 
diction is  ever  pronounced. 

Lastly.  Following  the  quest  for  the  divine  bene- 
diction, even  what  the  blessed  old  book  calls  the 
''last  enemy''  turns  out  to  be  no  enemy  after  all, 
but  a  friend.  Chastened  lives  are  better  than 
merry  ones;  earnest  souls  are  more  needed  than 
happy  ones.  Somehow  beyond  my  understand- 
ing I  am  sure  that  peace  is  the  reward  of  that 
chastened  life.  I  love  this  earth  and  the  life 
rooted  therein,  its  sunshine  and  its  flowers, 
its  dear  terrestrial  loves  and  its  high  terrestrial 
duties,  and  it  is  tragic  to  sever  these  ties.  But 
on  the  horizon  line  I  feel  sure  that  the  tragedy 
melts  into  tenderness,  that  on  the  death-heights 
there  lies  repose,  and  even  on  battle  days  there 
is  peace  beyond  the  clouds.  The  tears  we  shed 
at  the  grave  may  drop  on  celestial  fields  and  may 
help  grow  the  grain  we  fain  had  garnered  here. 
What  we  must  leave  undone  here  may  be  the 
better  done  there. 


THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION  223 

"On  the  earth  the  broken  arcs;  in  the   heaven  the  perfect 
round." 

Once,  when  I  had  tried  to  say  something  like 
this  in  a  sermon,  a  listener  came  to  me  with  a 
grateful  but  disappointed  face,  saj^ing:  ''I  believe 
it's  true,  all  true,  but  how  is  one  to  feel  it?  I 
can  not  see  it;  what  can  I  do  to  see  it?"  I  could 
only  reply:  <<We  can  only  catch  glimpses  of  it 
now  and  here.  Only  on  rare  truth-seeing  and 
truth-telling  moments  will  the  apparently  con- 
flicting lines  combine  in  the  higher  unity."  My 
listener's  solicitations  reminded  me  of  that  one 
day  that  was  given  me  to  taste  Alpine  delights, 
one  little  day  out  of  a  life-time  into  which  the 
anticipations  and  dreams  of  years  gone  were  to 
be  compressed,  and  out  of  which  the  recollections 
of  years  were  to  be  drawn.  Of  course  I  was  out 
of  bed  long  before  day-light,  because  I  had  but 
one  day  to  do  that  for  which  the  complacent 
sleepers  around  me  had  weeks  and  months.  I  be- 
gan the  day  by  going  in  search  of  that  might}^ 
work  of  Thorwaldsen,  the  most  impressive  pro- 
duct of  the  chisel  I  have  ever  seen  or  expect  to 
see.  I  traced  its  lines  on  the  solid  rock  in  the 
first  grey  of  early  dawn,  and  then  hastened  to  catch 


224  ^^^  DIVINE    BENEDICTION 

the  first  boat  on  Lake  Lucerne  that  was  to  leave 
me  at  Waggis,  for  I  was  to  make  the  top  of  Rigi 
by  the  right  of  climbing.  I  disdained  an  elevated 
railway.  It  was  a  cold,  foggy,  threatening 
morning.  The  captain  shook  his  head  as  he  tried 
to  tell  me  in  broken  English  that  Rigi  had  not 
unveiled  its  glory  for  five  days.  I  began  the 
ascent  expecting  to  be  contented  with  the  fatigue 
of  the  climb,  though  no  view  were  given  me.  I 
had  the  fog,  and,  part  of  the  wa}^  the  rain  all  to 
myself;  bits  of  near  ruggedness  tantalized  and 
detained  me,  but  no  distant  glories,  no  mountain 
vistas,  were  possible. 

I  could  hear  the  tinkling  of  cow-bells  in  deep 
chasms  below  me  into  which  I  could  not  look, 
and  occasionally  the  call  of  goat-herds  came 
from  the  heights  above  me  where  I  could  not 
see.  Near  surprises  constantly  delighted  me; 
here  and  there  I  was  helped  and  touched  inex- 
pressibly by  the  wayside  shrines  erected  for  the 
encouragement  of  the  herders  who  sought  the 
uplands  for  their  pasturage,  long  before  those 
heights  were  sought  for  their  beauty.  In 
those  foggy,  enveloped  fastnesses  I  was  as  good 
a  Catholic  as  any  one.     The  crude  art,  the  rustic 


THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION  225 

image  of  Mary,  the  weather-eaten  crucifix  were 
bathed  in  reverence,  redolent  with  a  piety  that  was 
as  much  mine  as  that  of  those  who  reared  them 
centuries  ago,  and  who  to-day  claim  exclusive 
monopoly  of  the  symbolism.  After  a  while  I 
got  a  glass  of  goat's  milk  and  a  piece  of  black 
bread  from  a  mountaineer,  in  lieu  of  the  break- 
fast I  did  not  stop  to  eat;  and  still  I  climbed. 
The  fog  was  so  dense  at  times  that  I  could  scarcely 
see  the  slender  trail  a  few  yards  ahead  of  me. 
Two  hours  and  a  half,  three  hours,  and  still  no 
break  in  the  clouds.  The  dampness  had  reached 
through  my  clothing,  the  spirit  was  growing 
chilly  as  well  as  the  body.  I  heard  voices  above 
me.  They  were  talking  English;  they  were  com- 
ing toward  me;  they  were  descending,  cross  and 
disappointed;  they  advised  me  to  turn  around 
and  go  down  with  them.  They  laughed  at  my 
persistence  in  keeping  on,  for  had  they  not  been 
up  there  two  days  and  two  nights,  and  was  it  not 
darker  this  morning  than  it  had  been  at  all?  But 
this  was  my  one  day.  I  would  make  an  Alpine 
summit,  though  no  vision  was  granted.  Another 
half  hour  of  fog  and  the  mist  relented  a  little. 
Again  I  could  hear  voices  away  above  me;  I  was 


226  THE    DIVINE   BENEDICTION 

approaching  one  of  the  inns  on  the  way.  Sud- 
denly I  came  upon  a  very  little  boy  crying  pite- 
ously.  His  herd  of  a  dozen  goats  with  distended 
udders  would  not  be  driven  up  the  hill  to  be 
milked.  While  he  was  driving  or  pulling  one  a 
few  yards  upward,  another  in  search  of  a  neglect- 
ed tuft  of  grass  would  with  her  nimble  feet  de- 
scend the  crag  up  which  he  had  driven  her  with 
so  much  labor.  I  tried  to  speak  a  kind  word  to 
him,  but  my  English  made  him  cry  all  the  harder, 
and  when  I  tried  my  German  on  him  he  screamed, 
and,  to  tell  the  truth,  his  crying  made  me  think 
that  our  feelings  were  very  much  alike.  I  wanted 
to  cry  from  sheer  loneliness  and  disappointment. 
Fortunately  my  English  frightened  the  goats  as 
well  as  the  boy.  Not  feeling  good  for  anything 
else,  I  was  glad  to  become  goat-herd,  and  so  I 
drove  them  right  royally,  while  the  small  boy 
followed  ungraciously  a  long  way  behind,  as  if 
still  suspicious  of  the  sanity  of  one  who  could 
not  talk  better  than  1  could.  A  warmer  glovv' 
came  into  the  atmosphere,  things  assumed  more 
definite  outline,  the  little  mountain  station  was 
revealing  itself  above  me.  Panting  and  out  of 
breath,  I  sat  down  to  rest  on  a  big  rock.     After 


THE   DIVINE   BENEDICTION  227 

a  few  moments  I  turned  to  look  for  the  boy;  when, 
lo!  there  they  stood  all  before  me,  about  me, 
above  me,  the  entire  system  of  the  Bernese  Alps 
— Pilatus,  the  Wetterhorn,  the  Glarnisch — a  hun- 
dred and  twenty  miles  of  them,  like  a  line  of 
white-hooded  nuns  kneeling  at  prayer,  and — 

"  O'er  night's  brim  day  boiled  at  last, 
Boiled  pure  gold  o'er  the  cloud-cup's  brim, 
Where  spirting  and  suppressed  it  lay. 


Forth  one  wavelet,  then  another,  curled, 
Till  the  whole  sunrise,  not  to  be  suppressed, 
Rose-reddened,  and  its  seething  breast 
Flickered  in  bounds,  grew  gold,   then  overflowed 
the  world." 

Such  is  the  answer  I  would  make  to  the  friend 
who  asks  to  be  shown  the  unity  that  over-arches 
all  our  discord,  who  begs  for  the  revelation  which 
would  bring  the  "peace  that  passeth  all  under 
standing."  Life  is  a  short  day's  climbing;  mists 
and  rain  envelop  us.  Often  we  toil  up  expecting 
small  returns,  doubting  at  times  the  existence  of 
mountain  ranges,  content  at  last  to  become  hum- 
ble herders  of  a  few  goats,  perchance.  Then 
suddenly  the  simple  task  is  overtaken   with    a 


228  THE   DIVINE    BENEDICTION 

glad  surprise.  A  halt,  an  unexpected  turn,  and  a 
revelation  breaks  upon  us,  and  then  our  years 
stand  around  draped  in  white,  capped  with  Al- 
pine splendors,  and  the  whiteness  of  their  peaks 
is  not  miracle  or  dogma,  not  creed,  sect  or  text, 
not  the  hope  of  heaven  or  the  fear  of  hell,  not  a 
devil  overcome  or  a  distant  God  reconciled  by 
the  vicarious  flow  of  a  Savior's  blood;  but  the 
celestial  commonplaces  of  earthly  duties  and 
human  privileges;  a  mother's  love,  a  father's  man- 
ly care,  the  love  of  home  and  children,  the 
heart  ties,  soft  as  silk  but  strong  as  iron,  that 
either  bind  us  to  God,  or  mangle  and  cripple  us, 
as  we  heed  or  defy  them.  These  bring  us  the 
"peace  of  God  which  passeth  all  understanding, " 
and,  to  complete  the  thought  of  the  text,  garrison 
our  hearts  and  our  thoughts  in  the  ideal,  the 
Christ  Jesus  of  the  soul. 


THE    END. 


PRINTED  BY  R.  R.  DONNELLEY 

*    SONS    COMPANY,    AT    THE 

LAKESIDE    PRESS,   CHICAGO 

MDCCCXCVII 


Date  Due 

Ap  22  -SR 

f '  ■'•  6  -SS 

1        ^' 

.MMg^flffiSSSSw^^ 

, 

1 

1 

07035 


5263 


iiii 


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